FOR Colin Winstanley, the Federation of Small Businesses proved a lifeline when he decided to set up his own internet-based pharmacy.

The 57-year-old from Whipton had worked as a full-time pharmacist when he realised the potential of tapping into the cyberspace consumer market.

He said: "I developed the very anti-social hobby of playing with computers and thought it would be fun to produce a website for myself.

"I approached my boss at the pharmacy and asked if we could split the profits if I could get the orders in.

"He agreed and in the first month we sold one book. I was on cloud nine.

"Then, as the business grew, I started scaling down my time at the pharmacy. I gave up my job completely three-and-a- half years ago to focus full time on the online business.

"Giving up that little bit of emotional security was a huge jump, and that's when I joined the FSB."

Colin watched as his company, www. mypharmacy.co.uk, grew, but what he didn't realise was that somebody else already had the trademark for the name.

He said: "It was through FSB that I met my business mentor, Richard Carpenter, of Enterprise Assist.

"Before I met him I thought I was doing everything okay. He looked at all the areas I could be vulnerable in. One thing I had not thought of was intellectual property rights.

"We discovered that a guy in Germany already had the trademark for MyPharmacy, so we decided we would have to rebrand to SuperLiving.co. uk.

"Changing website names took an awful lot of time.

"We got a company to redesign the site and they arranged all the technical bits. Without that we would have failed.

"It's so important to get it right. You need to work with people who know what they are doing. The FSB is brilliant because you get to meet other business owners who are in the same boat as you are.

"It can be very lonely having your own business if you don't talk to other people, and you can get very isolated and insular, which means you can forget the obvious things that need to be done.

"It is also important to keep up to date with change in the business world."

Colin employs four members of staff, working from an office on Exeter's Sowton Industrial Estate.

SuperLiving.co.uk sells non-prescription drugs and vitamins and Colin has expanded the stock to include books on healthy living, success and happiness. He also posts articles for customers.

His wife, who previously had no experience with computers, now designs the web pages and deals with content.