ONE of Darlington's best known family businesses is going global thanks to the rapid growth of its website.

Lamb's toy shop, on West Auckland Road, took its first tentative steps onto the information superhighway four years ago.

But having averaged about 10,000 hits-a-month last year, this year has seen that grow almost four-fold.

Anthony Lamb, whose grandfather, Fred, first opened a shop on the site 65 years ago, joined the business now run by his father, Barrie, seven years ago, having worked as a farmer all of his life.

Now he is in charge of www.lambstoys.co.uk, which keeps people all over in touch with what stock is available.

"In April this year, I got 38,000 hits, so I've quadrupled the people accessing my site," he said.

Although only about one per cent of the business is actually sold via the web, many customers see what they want and telephone the shop to make use of mail order facilities.

"There are a lot of people visit my site for information and a lot of people generally then telephone or mail order," said Anthony.

"Buying online is about one per cent of the business at the moment, but I can get a good feel for what people are looking for."

Although about 50 per cent of traffic comes from America - one of 30 to 40 different countries, worldwide orders are low, because the cost of shipping large items outweighs the pros of having the goods sent.

So the shop mostly ships the "high ticket" prices, such as radio controlled toys and model railways.

"You get a hell of a lot of hits from abroad, but it depends what you sell as to how much you sell," he said.

However, Anthony hopes to target the US and Canadian markets to make the most of their potential.

While the shop originally sold fruit and veg, it became a toy shop in 1970.

People can visit the shop's website at www.lambst-oys.co.uk, which is hosted by wizzeweb.com.