Kenny's, one of the best bookshops in Ireland, has the client list to kill for, featuring as it does both the American University Libraries and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

But however prestigious the American libraries, to Kenny's, they are merely a small part of a carefully-crafted client base that today stretches from New York to New Zealand from Toronto to Tokyo. Worth $500,000 this year alone, according to Conor Kenny, it was made possible purely by the Internet. "Quite simply, we just could not do this kind of business without it", he says.

It's five years since the Kenny family was persuaded to experiment with the international marketing power of the Internet. With its unrivalled ability to increase market awareness and to communicate the complete Kenny's service portfolio to an altogether new unprecedented target audience, Conor Kenny was immediately convinced of the Internet's "limitless potential".

"It was around the time that Digital closed here in Galway and I remember thinking, my God, you could go off to the Aran Islands, set up your pages and literally market anything to anyone, anywhere in the world. I was utterly convinced of the incredible things the Internet would do for our business", he explains.

His conviction paid off. With a Web site updated two years later, to include bibliographical information such as the now famous on-line catalogue of Irish books, together with a room-by-room virtual tour of the bookshop, Kennys became the most talked-about Internet site around. But while the tour may be virtual, the bookshop itself is very much the real thing and it is this, according to Conor Kenny, that successfully differentiates Kenny's from any other, apparently similar, providers.

"Through the Web, we are drawing people in, bringing them right into us from all over the world, whether it be a guy in the middle of the night in Minnesota, or someone in the remotest part of Asia. And what we are giving them is the total experience that is Kenny's - the atmosphere, photographs of our key contact people, reviews of contemporary fine art exhibitions of which there are 22 this year alone, and of course readings - we're talking of real people in a real place", he explains.

And it is this "relationship building" that facilitates the customer-to-client transition, crucial to Kennv's business: $200.000 of the half-a-million dollars currently accruing from Internet marketing is repeat business. Irish Book Parcels, operated by Des Kenny, and a key part of the complete company package is a serious beneficiary of Internet e-mail.

"All over the World Wide Web, people ask to register with us by e-mail. We then call them up with an 80 per cent successful hit rate", explains Conor Kenny. Right now Irish Book Parcels has approximately 1,300 clients across the world, each of whom receives four to five new Irish books in each regular mailing. Selected titles match both the client's interest and their budget, with purchases being charged to their credit card before being despatched for delivery.

Kenny's strategic use of the Internet facilitates better understanding of market dynamics, helping identify new areas of revenue growth. Simultaneously, it builds a database of prospects that, in turn, offer ever-increasing revenue opportunities.

The Internet plays a key role in all areas of Kenny's business. 1,500 new publications listings are sent out by e-mail to all its target markets each Friday evening, with orders arriving back on the following Monday morning. E-mail is equally crucial to the successful operation of its Wants/Search Service. And while all of Kenny's 38 staff use telecommunication extensively in their day to day work, of the six specially-designated communications personnel, one works full-time feeding queries tot he relevant target departments.

There are other, somewhat quirky involvements. Conor Kenny currently has two prospective buyers for a Beckett collection, which he has offered for sale internationally on behalf of a New York based author accessed on the Web. "Essentially we were able to down-load information from his web site and then present it in a printed-catalogue form, in the process attracting not one, but two potential buyers for it", he explains.

80 per cent of Kenny's client communications are now undertaken through e-mail. But though the Internet is proving the best way-to-go for his business, Conor Kenny is appalled by the current Trade Board statistics stating that less than 20 per cent of Irish exporters are currently using the e-mail facility. He finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that 80 per cent of Irish exporters are ignoring a marketing and communications tool with recognised, unrivalled capacity to build and reinforce relationships with key customers.

"The World Wide Web is a dynamic sales channel, growing at a phenomenal rate. We find it an invaluable alternative route of contact, and quite frankly, I find it alarming that Irish exporters have been so negligent in their approach to it, effectively denying themselves access to the innumerable, diverse ways it can be of benefit to them", he says.

Telecommunications have dramatically changed the profile of Kenny's business. Thanks to the Internet it is now trading profitably, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, in global markets of almost limitless opportunity.

The attendant international publicity attached to Kenny's Web Site is paying dividends in itself. According to Conor Kenny, a recent appearance on American PBS television by his mother, Maureen, and his brother Des, means that visitors to their shop and constantly streaming in with "hey, we recognise you from TV back home".

If there is anything, bar the Internet, that has had such a profound impact on Kenny's business, Conor is unaware of it. Except, perhaps, for Maureen Kenny, who since 1940 has been a virtual tour de force in the national and now international book trade. "At 80 years of age, she's still putting in a six day week", he says. "We were the second bookshop in the world to go on-line and now we plan to stay there with the best of them".

And who was the first? A Sci-Fi store in Southern California. Typical!