A global e-commerce company based in Ulverston has seen turnover more than double as lockdown has driven a boom in online shopping.

Fruugo, which has offices on Fountain Street, stocks no products itself, but specialises in driving traffic to its website to make sales which are then directly fulfilled by retailers around the world.

Retailers pay a certain percentage per sale and then send the product to the buyer.

"It went crazy in the second half of March," said chief commercial officer Tony Preedy.

"It was busier in April than it was last Christmas.

"We had a huge amount of volume."

He says products like hand sanitiser and face masks were initially popular, followed by a run on home office supplies and health and fitness equipment.

"Now we are seeing an amplified volume of shopping across pretty much all of our categories," he said.

Since the beginning of the year Fruugo has grown to work with retailers in 32 countries whose goods go to a total of 46 nations.

Enquiries from retailers which want to list their goods have more than doubled with turnover year on year doubling as well.

"People are slowly adjusting their thinking," said Tony.

"There was a question about when is it going to go back to how it was before?

"We just don't think that's going to happen. It's now an adjustment to a new environment. This has probably fast forwarded us three to five years as far as e-commerce and retailing is concerned.

"Pretty much every business is realising that if it has been slow to adopt e-commerce then it needs to get onto it and for those that have been trading online for some years they are recognising there is significant opportunity for them to extend their digital footprint and use market places."