In a quiet corner of Queensbury, a dozen-strong team of innovators is proving the old saying that, sometimes, less is more.

Secluded in a top-floor suite in cavernous Black Dyke Mills, legendary wool textiles firm John Foster of England is doing great business.

These days the manufacturer bears little resemblance to the gargantuan outfit it once was. But for this company, downsizing has signalled success.

When managing director David Gallimore joined the firm in 1988, it employed 800 people and took up most of the massive mill complex. On a turnover of £35 million it made annual profits of £3.5 million.

These days it employs just 12 people, has a turnover nudging £3 million and sells 99.7 per cent of its top-quality fabrics overseas.

And it's a weaver with no looms: every millimetre of the 200,000 metres it produces annually is woven on commission elsewhere in West Yorkshire.

Although it only produces a twentieth of the four million metres it used to turn out, the financial returns are proportionately larger because of its exclusive position at the luxury end of the trade.

With Japan as its key export market, it is entirely appropriate that the nation's revered emperor wears a suit woven from one of Foster's specialities, mohair and wool.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s the old John Foster's survival strategy involved buying up rivals along with their order books, shutting them down and selling off assets such as looms to India.

In November 2001, the old firm went into liquidation. A month later, a new company - John Foster of England - was born. Three of the six current owners are also employed by the firm.

In two and a half years the company, established in 1819, has cemented a niche for itself at the very top end of the international textiles trade. It works closely with customers to produce world-class fabrics.

"We're very positive about the future," enthused Mr Gallimore, one of the six owners. "We've developed a market in Japan where our fabric and our name is very well respected. It now represents 60 per cent of our business."

Mr Gallimore, who has visited Japan 50 times in the past 14 years, said that now that country was finally easing itself out of a decade-long depression, business was more vibrant.

Sales director Claire Butterworth went to Black Dyke on a work placement as a textile engineering student in 1999 and somehow never left.

In fact she liked the company so much, she bought into it. "I always wanted to be in textiles and I was in the right place at the right time and ended up staying during the changes," she said.

"I worked in every department, which gave me a great overview. Then I decided I wanted to be on the customer side. I'm lucky I have a job I love so much."

Her role now is to strengthen existing markets, such as the Far East and Middle East, and develop new ones in the United States and in China's boom economy. It's all part of a five-year plan.

"Europe is very difficult," said Ms Butterworth. "Italy was always a reasonable area but Italian mills are in a bit of a mess. They're going through what the UK went through in a big downsizing exercise."

John Foster is gearing up to try to reactivate its fledgling UK market. But Japan remains where its main action is. To this end, John Foster of England has reintroduced some of the dormant brands acquired when the firm was gobbling up the competition.

It now markets fabrics under such labels as Wm Laycock, Pepper Lee, E A Matthews and Charles Sowden. It even created a brand called Darrowdale especially for its Anglophile Japanese customers.

"What it comes down to is a slimmed-down and very efficient company," said Mr Gallimore. "We're better at what we do today than we have been in the last 15 years. We deliver on time and the quality of the product is unquestionably of a very high standard."

The sun, it seems, is shining on this Queensbury enterprise. Straight from the land of the rising sun.