A business set up in Bradford nearly two decades ago has bucked the national trend on sales by hooking into the dot.com revolution.

Electrical retailing giant Empire-direct, which sells cut-price electrical goods over the internet, enjoyed massive demand for goods during the festive period. And the succes story could lead to 150 extra jobs.

By contrast, the Confederation of British Industry has reported that high street stores suffered their worst trading performance for a decade in the run-up to Christmas.

The award-winning multi-million pound on-line electrical store, empiredirect.co.uk, had more than two million visitors to its website during November and December. It processed more than 20,000 orders a week during the period.

Demand was so great for goods such as widescreen TVs, DVDs and personal computers that the company's distribution centre worked around the clock seven days a week.

Empire, founded by Madan Showan, pictured, even scrapped a major TV advertising campaign it had planned because it did not want to put excessive strain on the operations.

The e-commerce business recorded its best year yet with sales 160 per cent up on the year before.

Amarjit Singh, Empiredirect's sales director, said: "We are delighted with our performance which has exceeded our planned expectations - we had invested heavily in our infrastructure to enable us to keep up with the demand created and we are in an ideal position to continue to grow at this pace in 2003."