A SOUTH Lakeland firm's products are proving to be a bear' necessity for its customers around the globe.

Since launching last summer, the business has steadily grown, thanks to the worldwide shop window opened up by the Internet.

Say It With Bears sells a wide range of personalised teddy bears for special occasions, including birthdays, anniversaries and graduations, and has proved especially popular with men wanting to send a romantic present to their wives or girlfriends.

Setting up the business proved to be no picnic for owner Helen Hillman, who lives near Ings. She spent several months using the web to research the market and sourced suppliers from all over the world before creating a website for customers to buy bears online.

But her efforts are already bearing fruit, with orders coming in daily from people as far afield as Australia, California, India, France, Germany and Canada.

"The nice thing about an internet business is your shop is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to everyone all over the world. You go to bed, wake up the next morning and people from all corners of the globe have been in your shop buying things," Helen told Business Gazette.

She had been keen to run her own business from home for some time, and got the idea for Say It With Bears after shopping at the Bear Factory at Manchester's Trafford Centre.

"They sell all sorts of different teddy bears and I thought what a brilliant idea', said Helen.

Her teddy bears are dressed up in a variety of outfits, with themes ranging from Tarzan and Jane and a biker to a saucy Santa and even a dominatrix. Teddies are despatched in a gift box with a birth certificate as well as tags bearing personalised engraved messages.

Helen's son, Jamie, who has recently completed a PhD in computing at Lancaster University, helped her out by developing the firm's website (www.sayitwith bears.co.uk), including specially-designed software that enables her to track traffic on the site.

Within minutes of the website going live, Helen took her first order and she has not looked back since. Christmas was a "crazy" period for orders, while the run-up to Valentine's Day also proved very busy.

Now she is in talks with the NHS in Warwickshire and Coventry about becoming a sole provider of gifts for staff on its internal website.