John Lewis has launched a corporate sales service to help organisations furnish their offices.
John Lewis Solutions for business aims to provide a one-stop shop for a range of commercial enterprises including offices, show homes, training centres and hotels.

The department store, which has been in the corporate incentives market for several years, now aims to extend its corporate business from wine and hampers to include furnishings and electricals, even offering businesses a dedicated account contact to handle all aspects of order processing and delivery.

Development manager for corporate sales Andrew Sellers said: "The incentives market has always been a big part of our business, but we always focused on things like iPods and digital cameras. However, we were seeing more and more enquiries coming from businesses looking to buy across our assortment, wanting leather sofas, desks, that sort of thing, so the logical extension of that was to equip ourselves a bit better to deal with these enquiries.

"We can effectively get almost any piece of furniture or merchandise to people by the next day. For business customers, this really meets their needs."

The company can also help with fitting and electrical support, and will also take old unwanted furniture away.

Mr Sellers adds: "There are very few things we don't sell, which is a real strength of the business. We're not often stumped when someone has a shopping list of what they want - we cover most things for all sorts of businesses.

"There appears to be more and more emphasis on businesses providing a better working environment for their workforce. Companies can see it's worth spending a small amount of money on something like a break out area for staff - it can have a very positive effect."

The service is available now and, according to Mr Sellers, "early indicators are very positive".