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Have you noticed? The banking world is struggling a bit at the moment.

It's been difficult to sleep through, the news is full of gloom about the latest events, you can't have missed the reports.

In the thick of it has been the BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston who has been ahead of the pack with revelations about what is really happening long before anyone else right from the outset.

Mr Peston has been critcised for making the situation worse, I've even heard of hate blogs being set up against him. But surely this is just 'shooting the messenger'? Without doubt he has influence, he has a seemingly unrivalled pool of knowledge and information, his communications network work at lightning speed and his ability to turn around the next big story is impressive.

In my view, Robert Peston is demonstrating the same verve and determination in his role as BBC Business Editor as any entrepreneur does in his own field. Indeed, the skills required are similar; market understanding, the ability to 'feel' the underlying trends and the analytical skills (instinctive or intellectual) to take small items and represent them in a fashion that demands attention.

What I get from all this is that the signs were there for a long time that economic turmoil was coming, the scale of it has come as a surprise to many because they didn't want to believe it, the gravy train was going to go on forever.

However, those of us who've invested a lot of time and effort into our e-commerce businesses are reporting excellent growth. Neville Fox, webmaster at Knit and Sew, told me on Monday that they had just had their best ever weekend with 148 sales, up nearly 50% over the same period last month. And in a conversation with Bob Bagley today I discovered that Fountain Filters has seen 25% growth for the last two years and is well on target for 35% growth in 2008.

Clearly, the whole of the economy has not gone into freefall, there are still lots of success stories around but they don't seem to be getting much attention at the moment. I guess it's true to say that only bad news sells papers.

Let's hope Mr Peston and his colleagues catch on to the one sector that really seems to be bucking the economic trend at the moment and gives the burgeoning small online business it's due recognition - we are after all, to paraphrase Napoleon, a nation of (online) shopkeepers.