A Poundbury-based online retailer is celebrating five years of success.

Cuckooland.com is the brainchild of founders Russell Davis, Nathalie Davis and Alex Ledsham, who set up the company in 2012 after spotting a gap in the market for a lifestyle emporium that offered unique, high-quality products together with outstanding customer service.

To date, the company has generated £7.5 million worth of sales, with a turnover of £3.5 million in the last year and more than 40,000 customers worldwide.

To celebrate five years staff held a party in the offices in true Cuckooland style - the celebration was filled with games, gifts, party food and an incredible cake by The Wonky Cake Company.

Director, Mr Ledsham said: It doesn’t feel that long ago, that three of us sat round and old outbuilding back in Kent that we made as a make shift office, and thrashed out ideas of what the business would be, and what we would sell.

"After eventually deciding we would sell online and build a company that was focussed on incredible customer service, great company culture for our staff, and selling incredible and unique products we started building the website with a web development company from Nottingham.

"We had decided to sell more in the gift market to begin with and we began selecting products, designing the site and how the business would operate.

"We then after a lot of deliberation, decided to move the business down to Dorset before we went live and grow the business from Poundbury.

"The stark reality of starting an online business is when you go live, only your friends and family visit the store, it was very tough and we had to learn fast.

"Our first break through moment came when we hired a PR agency, they managed to get a few of our products in the Daily Mail just in time for Christmas, the sales were incredible and for the first time we knew we had the making of a successful business. January came and the high hopes were slashed again with a very quiet spell, we tried everything we could to get visitors to the site, but it was clear with the average order value of gifts, we simply wouldn’t be able to sustain the business costs for that much longer.

"After a lot of deliberation we decided we could still sell incredible products in the furniture market, and we started with kids beds. Our first range was Tree Houses bunk beds, that are still one of our favourite products today, our first order was for over £10,000 to New York for three of these beds, and considering our average order was £45 before, we decided this was a good decision.

"From there, we expanded on the range, and the business begun to grow very fast, we begun to hire more staff and soon outgrew Prospect House and moved into Mey House."

"Today we are in an exciting business where we still hold our core values true, we are in a position where we soon be looking to design our own beds, take on exclusive ranges from across the globe and our aim is to really grow this from our home town of Poundbury."