The new John Lewis at Home store in Poole, which is opening in a few days. Photograph: Frank Baron

On the outskirts of Poole, just opposite an old-fashioned family butcher and a newsagent, a retail experiment gets under way tomorrow that could mark a whole new phase for middle England’s favourite shop.

Department store chain John Lewis – a high-street name synonymous with glossy, city centre developments – is gambling £6m on testing a small retail-park outlet called John Lewis at Home, which is not much more than a posh shed.

If it works – and the store chain intends to make a decision by January – the concept will be rolled out nationwide “at some pace”, according to the department store group’s managing director, Andy Street. He reckons there is room for up to 50 of these small outlets, which focus solely on homewares and stock none of the department store staples such as fashion, footwear, cosmetics or haberdashery. It is a major departure for the retailer, which can trace its history back more than 100 years but currently has only 28 stores, one of which – Cardiff – has only been open a month.

The idea is that the department store chain will get a huge boost if it can put a John Lewis outlet within a 40-minute drive of all UK shoppers. Currently less than 60% of the population have that access, so more stores are needed. They will pull in new shoppers and boost online sales, too, says the retailer, as more people order on the internet after seeing goods on display, or want to collect orders they have placed.

The new shed-shop, on the main road between Poole and Bournemouth and just a short drive from the multimillion-pound homes of Sandbanks, has some 40,000 sq ft of shopfloor space – about the same selling space as an average Asda devotes to food. It is the first time the retailer has ever moved into an existing retail unit and the store will stock 100,000 lines, compared to 350,000 in a full department store.

Courting success

Clad in grey and glass, and surrounded by manicured lawns and shrubs, it looks quite sophisticated for a retail-park outlet, especially one that was previously a Courts furniture shop and had stood derelict for five years following Courts’ collapse. Inside it is bright, white and wooden-floored.

Shoppers walk straight into the bedding department, complete with 28 different types of pillow. “It’s a killer assortment”, says Tim Harrison, the retailer’s head of new formats, who has developed this new-look shop. On ground level there’s also a bathroom department, with the retailer’s trademark wall of coloured towels, a lighting department with 750 different lamps, furnishing fabrics, a vast array of cushions, candles, curtains and gifts.

Up the stairs is a Christmas shop – which will disappear after the festive season in favour of garden furniture – kitchenware, an electricals department Harrison calls “authoritative” and a cafe. There is also a range of beds and furniture, though it is surprisingly limited and likely to be a disappointment to any shopper who thinks a John Lewis at Home store might be the place to start looking for a new sofa or sideboard.

There are also no mirrors, pictures, carpets, rugs or fitted kitchens.

“We had to draw the line somewhere,” says Harrison. “The John Lewis man in me wants to have it all, but we have had to make choices.” This selection, however, is not set in stone. They will make changes if shoppers want them and, in the meantime, there are computer terminals littered around the store to make online orders.

This week 150 new “partners”, as the employee-owned business calls its staff, were being put through their paces after three weeks of training in classrooms and the chain’s Southampton department store, some 45 minutes away. They are mostly locals, recruited new to the business from more than 1,200 applicants, many undoubtedly drawn to the retailer by its promise of annual profit sharing and a range of employee benefits that include John Lewis-owned holiday homes including one on nearby Brownsea Island, in the middle of Poole harbour.

John Lewis, which usually takes more than five years to take a new department store from first plans to cutting the red ribbon, has moved fast to open this one. Harrison started work on the idea back in January and it is just five months since the plan was made public.

Opting for plan B

The retailer has admitted the new John Lewis at Home format is a bit of a plan B. The group had previously announced plans to open at least 10 new full-size department stores and a number of half-size department stores. But the collapse in the commercial property market last year put almost all those expansion plans on hold as developers reassessed schemes and ran into trouble with funding. Only the new Stratford store near the Olympic site in east London is now certain to go ahead in the near future and ambitions for huge new stores in Leeds, Sheffield, Oxford, Portsmouth, Croydon and Crawley are on hold.

When the new strategy for out-of-town home stores was unveiled in May it looked risky. The recession had claimed several high-profile furniture retailers, including MFI, Ilva and New Heights, and it has also battered John Lewis. In September the department store chain unveiled a 50% collapse in half-year profits. The stores made just £21m, down from £43m in the same period last year and £54m in 2007.

Most of that damage was done by the homewares departments, which generate nearly one third of the retail chain’s total sales and an even bigger proportion of profits. Like-for-like homeware sales were down more than 8% as the moribund housing market hit sales of items such as fridges, furniture and curtain fabric, which are closely linked to the number of people moving home.

But the retailer insisted the downturn was an opportunity to cash in on cheap deals for unwanted out-of-town retail space, fill the gap left by collapsed rivals and lay the foundations for future growth – at a time when businesses owned by shareholders, who demand short-term returns on all investments, were constrained.

“This is really important for our future,” says Harrison. “We can make decisions like this because of the way we are structured. It doesn’t feel like a brave move. It feels exciting. We are really competent at homewares, so it is not so much of a risk.

“It feels like a John Lewis and looks like a John Lewis. When the doors open I want customers to love it.”

And they probably will – just so long as they are not looking for a sofa or a sideboard.