THE Assembly's e-commerce advice service Opportunity Wales says it has helped create over 2,300 jobs since its launch in April, 2001.

More than 3,720 organisations have benefited and the goal is to assist 4,500 businesses by February, 2007.

Andrew Davies, economic development and e-business minister, said: "We are committed to developing e-commerce and ensuring businesses have access to the help they need.

"These programme performance figures illustrate the success of the Opportunity Wales initiative and I am delighted that Wales is showing how e-commerce can have a significant impact on our economy."

One business that has been helped through the scheme is Switch Colours in Brynmawr.

Launched in April, the firm sells coloured light switch covers to the public via the Internet at www.switchcolours.co.u k

The business was started by partners Phil Marshall, Chris Morgan and Andrew Banks when they realised it was difficult to buy replacement covers for light switches in any colour except white.

Mr Banks said: "When decorating rooms it's easy to accidentally paint over light switches and there is no easy way to replace or clean them.

"We were already manufacturing specialist plastic goods and it was easy to design something to fit over existing covers.

"We wanted to capitalise on the fact that more and more people now use the Internet to look for items for the home when they're decorating: it's often the first port of call.

"Opportunity Wales helped us to identify how we could make the best use of e-commerce, including e-marketing to consumers, which was not something that we had experience of.

"It has given us instant access to customers, saved us money by allowing us to direct people to specific product details on the website rather than send samples through the post and enabled us to target relevant sectors directly."

Opportunity Wales' Susan Geary said: "It's not just a case of having a website and e-mail: businesses need to know how to use them effectively and how to adapt the technology as the business grows."