FOR some companies, adding the word shed to their title they hope gives their product a modern, artisan twist, but in the case of the Cheese Shed, the name is indeed factually correct.

At the rear of Ian Wellens' house in Bovey Tracey, is a nicely painted blue shed that is home to this growing online cheese business.

The Cheese Shed has been running for four years now and was born out of what Ian describes as a lightbulb moment. "At the end of 2005, the sentence came into my mind 'sell Westcountry cheese online'.

"I don't know where it came from, although I was an enthusiastic consumer of cheese from my local deli.

"I approached the guy who ran the deli and asked if he would be interested if I set up the website and generated a few online orders then would he pack it and send it out.

"We had a our first customer in the spring of 2006 and it has just gone on and on from there."

James and Gill Mann, who run Manns Delicatessen in Bovey Tracey, stock and wrap the cheese and also make up the gift boxes, which are a popular part of the business.

"People often send the gift boxes like they would send flowers or chocolates," Ian says. "We also have the enthusiasts, who perhaps live in Edinburgh but want to try cheese from down here, then the third sort of customer is the wedding customer, and they are increasingly interested in wedding cakes made of cheese."

It sounds like an extraordinary idea, but it is one that has really captured a lot of happy couples' imagination.

"It seems perfectly normal to me now," Ian laughs. "But this idea of stacking cheese in a graduated pyramid and then decorating it has really taken off.

"We have tried to find ways of varying how it might look – the Eighty-Eight is black and white and has a dramatic, sophisticated look to it, which sounds implausible because it's a stack of cheese. But some people just don't like fruit cakes, or want something different."

For Ian, his business is his passion. "I was and am still excited about cheese. There is such a huge and ever increasing variety – we stock over 100 varieties. But we have never been tempted to divert from that original idea that we should only sell cheese from the Westcountry. It's true that with weddings if someone says, 'I absolutely have to have Stilton because that is where I come from', then of course we will supply Stilton, but out starting point is always the Westcountry. Where possible, we will point them to, say, Beenleigh Blue instead of Stilton."

Although Ian admits it was a bit of a risk to restrict The Cheese Shed to selling cheese solely from this region, what may seem like a narrow geographical focus is actually wide in terms of the types of cheeses made here. "If people are obsessed by Gorgonzola we say 'what about Cornish Blue'. We normally have got something similar and more often than not people are happy to take a slight detour."

For those who are keen to branch out from their usual favourite, Ian suggests going to a good deli.

"Tell them what you normally like and ask them to suggest something just a little off the beaten track," he says.

www.thecheeseshed.com