A COMPANY which imports high-quality stone, porcelain and wood flooring from across the world has relocated into a former Little Chef restaurant near Kendal.

Pure Stone has outgrown its property in Kirkby Lonsdale where it has been operating for eight years and is moving and expanding into the ex-eaterie just off the A591 at Prizet.

"We'll be sad to move away from Kirkby but there was nothing in and around the town large enough to accommodate our expansion and that had appropriate planning," said director Alexis Simons, who runs the business with her husband Richard.

"Our shop in Kirkby Lonsdale served us really well and it was great to be part of what is a tight knit and supportive group of retailers on Kirkby high street, however as our business expanded we struggled to show the full range of products we had available in a relatively small space and there wasn’t much availability of larger premises in the town. Added to this parking and access has always been difficult in Kirkby."

The business supplies companies up and down the country with tiles from its warehouse based in Hutton Roof, near Kirkby Lonsdale, and also imports from all over Europe, Brazil, Turkey and India.

"We deal directly with manufacturers and quarries, and the economies of scale this gives our business make us very competitive when supplying retail customers," said Alexis.

On what attracted the firm to the empty building, she added: "It is in a fantastic position just off the A591 and it could almost have been designed as a tile shop, as it has huge windows and a lot of open space.

"It has a huge car park and is easily accessed from the M6 which is important as a lot of our customers travel quite a long way to see us.

"We have still kept stone tiles at our core, but there are also great displays of porcelain tiles, wood flooring, iron radiators and lighting.

"Having such a huge car park will also allow us to show our range of external tiles for patios which is something we couldn’t do in a high street shop."