There's more to a sofa than meets the eye and that's why Josephine Pugh insists that the ones she makes are sold a certain way.

"Customers must understand how our sofas are made and how they can determine the specifications to understand what fantastic value they're getting," she said.

Josephine and her husband Charles, pictured, aim their marketing at 25-30-year-olds and feel their approach is quite distinct from that of the UK's traditional furniture retailers.

Josephine said they sell their sofas at trade prices and the deal includes the customer's choice of leather or fabric.

The made-to-measure approach obviously works, as the Sunday Times has just named Sofas-UK as the fastest-growing business in Wales and ninth-fastest grower in the UK.

Based in a windswept huddle of factories on the Cwmtillery industrial estate on the edge of Abertillery, Sofas-UK showed an average growth rate of almost 150 per cent between 1998 and 2001.

Annual sales rose during this period from £274,000 to £4.2m in 1991.

Staff numbers have risen to 50 at Cwmtillery and another 50 at the company's nine stores dotted around southern England.

Charles said:" We're lucky that the people at our factory are fantastic."