For many years brand consultant Simon Middleton has advised others on how to develop and market their own businesses.

But he is now putting his lessons into practice after a challenge from MBA students at Norwich Business School inspired him to set up his own online business selling lefthanded guitars.

And what started as a challenge in the seminar room has struck such a chord in the global market place that the 53-year-old is giving up the day job to work full-time on the venture.

Mr Middleton, whose career to date has included running a brand consulting business, working in advertising and writing books about marketing and branding, is now the boss of specialist online retailer Lefthand Bear, selling guitars, banjos, mandolins to lefthanded musicians across the world.

'I was doing a seminar at the Norwich Business School and a couple of MBA students made a challenge to me,' Mr Middleton said. 'My book's premise is that if you tell a good story, you can build a good brand, but they asked me if I had ever done it myself and so it started as a branding challenge.'

Mr Middleton, a lefthanded guitarist who is in a band of his own, suddenly recalled the difficulties in getting hold of decent instruments, and so the business was born.

'I created a website, starting with about a dozen instruments,' he said. 'But what happened is that very quickly we started selling instruments all over the world from our own living room. I've sold instruments to people in Italy, Australia and even California. Since we've been going, we've sold around 200 instruments.'

Although the website first started in May 2010, he has now teamed up with businessman and former pinesolutions chairman Nigel Cushion, who has helped secure investment to take the business on to the next level.

'As the business started to grow, we needed to take it more seriously, so about eight months ago Nigel Cushion, who I've known for a long time got involved. He said he thought it was a serious business and we went to look for some investment, and much to my surprise we got �75,000 from a high-worth individual for a small percentage of the company. That was enough to get us up and running, and from October, I've been working on this full-time.

The name Lefthand Bear was chosen following internet research by Mr Middleton's wife Sheila, who discovered that 90pc of bears tend to be left pawed. A second brand, Banjos Direct, has also been set up and the business, which is based in Norwich, is starting to sell right-handed instruments in the wake of customer demand.

'It's an online business, but everything comes through our workshop,' he added. 'Lefthanded instruments are a niche, but the other niche we've discovered, by accident, is banjos, where demand is growing.

'For five years, I've been advising people how to create brands, and I've worked with a number of big clients. Now, I'm applying all that. The ambition is to become a �5m business in five years and we think the market is there.'

Mr Cushion said that while Mr Middleton's role was more 'on stage' dealing with customers and suppliers, he was happy to have a 'backstage' role as chairman providing 'financial discipline, governance, and support'.

'I have known Simon for some time, but when we met earlier this year and Simon explained the exciting journey he wanted to undertake, we discovered a shared an enthusiasm for music and in a 'Rolls–Royce' moment decided to combine our expertise and see if we could make this Norfolk start-up a world beater,' Mr Cushion said.

'So far it's working really well, proving great fun and we believe we have hit on a winning formula that could take this business to world number one!'