Irish website wins 2008 e-Business award

An Irish-owned website has taken the top prize in its category at the recent 2008 Alibaba/APEC World e-Business awards in Hangzhou, China.

Powerballs.com, owned and operated by Tipperary man and former Mobile Phone retailer Rory McLoughney, competed against over 30,000 companies worldwide.

Speaking before an assembled audience of over 4,000 business owners at the Zhejiang People's Great Hall in Hangzhou, Rory McLoughney used the opportunity to promote his product range to the assembled Chinese SMEs.

Mr McLoughney said: "Thanks to the success we've achieved during the past four years with Powerballs.com, you'll now be able to find a Powerball in virtually every country in the world today - everywhere, in fact, except China.

"We're looking forward to changing that with the massive publicity this APEC award will help generate for us all around Asia going forward."

Powerball is a "gadget" which blurs the line between sport, fitness, rehabilitation and fun for users of all ages - since discovering the little known product in Taiwan during the late nineties, McLoughney has turned Powerball into a global phenomenon with over 1,000,000 of the gyroscopes sold worldwide.