Saleem Kader's office is the kind you would expect for the managing director of a successful and diverse company such as Bombay Stores.

There's the usual leather sofas, fine wooden desk and regal-sized chair.

The only difference is that, rather than being located on the top floor of the company building, Mr Kader's office is in the middle of his company's wholesale warehouse.

From within the glass walls he can see everything in the building, including the hundreds and hundreds of rolls of fine textile fabrics.

Not that he spends much time here, he tells me. He prefers being on the shop floor, or with the sales team, or speaking directly to one of the more than 100 workers.

His office is in the hub of just one of the three areas in which Bombay Stores now operates, alongside retail and the newly-established mail order wing.

Mr Kader is the second generation to run the business, having taken over from his parents and the firm's founder Abdul and Mariam Kader.

The business the couple started in 1967 on Great Horton Road was, in Mr Kader's own words, "a small corner shop" specialising in Asian fabrics. The growth of Bradford's Asian community resulted in an increase in demand for the fabrics, the vast majority of which were manufactured around Lancashire.

As the years went by and the UK textile industry began to decline the business began to more and more source its fabrics from abroad, with Japan, Korea, India and Pakistan being the principal sources.

Mr Kander said: "By the 1970s we had customers coming to visit us from all over the country because the variety we had on offer was quite unique.

"We expanded the shop three or four times. I always remember from my childhood builders being in as there was so much work done - for a time we lived upstairs."

Mr Kander joined the business full time when he left school and began to drive the business towards his passion for wholesale. The firm began to develop more customers, so much so the family had to buy up houses around the area to accommodate the volumes of fabrics. Things became so big the firm decided to relocate to its current home in Shearbridge Road.

The business now owns a great deal of the area. The firm's wholesale warehouse round the corner from the retail outlet was opened in 1993 and this year it acquired the former Bradford Rios nightclub which it is in the process of converting into a wedding and conference centre.

The company also helped set up the Great Horton Enterprise scheme.

"It has been good for the area," Mr Kader said. There are some good businesses based around here, such as Mumtaz.

"The area seems to have been one of the more neglected areas in the city and often seems to get left behind. As a business we have been based here for 40 years and feel it is our duty to work for the area."

One of the most gratifying parts of the business's history for Mr Kader has been seeing generation after generation of the same family doing business with the firm.

He proudly tells me of a client whom he remembers coming in as a young boy who bought his wedding outfit from the Bombay Stores, and who recently came in to buy clothes for one of his children's weddings.

Different generations have continued to work as well as shop at Bombay Stores and it remains very much a family business. Mr Kander's son Shayaan and his nephew Samir work within the company and the family remains committed to the business.

While retail may have helped get the business of its feet and wholesale help it grow into the company it is, Mr Kader said that the company's current focus is on its new mail order services, which is growing at a rate of knots.

The focus is a forward thinking strategy, as he explains.

"We are currently developing the operations in the UK as well as Europe and the USA where we see huge potential," he said.

"Because of the dimensions and the space in these particular areas we need to be able to distribute all over the countries. People living in small towns in, say, Pennsylvania may not have access readily to a shop selling these sorts of clothes or fabrics. With this new business they can order it and have it delivered to their home within a few days."

With such widespread markets and ambitious plans the business looks on track for a very bright future. If the Kanders continue the growth they have made in the first 40 years, who knows where they will be in 2047?

l Bombay Stores is calling upon the Bradford public to send in their favourite memories over the three generations to paint a picture of how the community has been involved over the last four decades.

Did you used to work there? Did you get married in a dress made from their cloth? E-mail pr@chocolatepr.co.uk, or write to Bombay Stores, Shearbridge Road, Bradford.