Getting the right feel to a showroom isn't always easy. Too often, especially with limited floor space, there's a tendency to cram too much in - to crowd displays together and to leave assorted boxes and brochures lying around because there's nowhere else to put them. Clearly though, that's not the case at kbb specialist Andre Le Gros in Eastbourne.

As showrooms go, this one is relatively small. But maybe it's for this reason that md Andrew Payne has not only thought hard about the way his products are displayed, but about how to create the perfect ambience. When I arrive for example, there's plenty of coffee on the go - the real stuff obviously - and a mellow groove coming from the hi-tech sound system. There's also that elusive feel of light and space, while the floors and displays are devoid of clutter.

"I hate clutter and there's very little of it," Payne explains. "We've got all the brochures but they're in cupboards. We can get them out in seconds. This is a little bit like an upper class coffee bar, a ladies hairdresser or a Porsche showroom. We wanted this to be somewhere that everyone feels comfortable to come into. It's not all hard lines, we keep it as soft as we can and somewhere they can sit and have quality coffee."

To Payne, getting the space between the displays right, and achieving the right ambience, is just as important as what you're actually selling. It's all about being aware of what other showrooms are doing wrong, and making sure you don't make the same mistakes.

"I hate walking through canyons and in some showrooms that's what it's like," he says. "The displays are too tall. The whole idea here was firstly to give us space over the top to give us circulation of air. We try to keep things at three quarter level so the units don't appear too tall. We enable people to stand back and look at the kitchen from further away than you would ever do in your own house."

Corner shop

Launched just over two years ago, the store is set on a corner plot near the centre of town but just far enough away, Payne says, to deter weekend timewasters. The typical plate glass windows allow in plenty of light, but the airy feel is also helped by a determined strategy not to display too much. Seven kitchen displays take up much of the available floor space, these are from Dutch specialist Keller. Appliances are from Siemens, ATAG and Blanco. There's also a small bathroom section with products mainly from Matki and Vitra.

"We could have filled this place up but for me it wouldn't have worked," Payne continues. "It's got to feel open. Even the lighting is important. It's all ultra low energy LEDs from Illumina. They only just enhance the daylight. I don't like going to places where it's too bright. What's the point of showing someone a look that you're not going to achieve in their house?"

In terms of customer strategy, the store favours the softly softly approach. "We don't ignore people," says Payne. "I always insist on offering them a coffee, discussing the weather, the parking or whatever, and then asking what we can help them with. We let them drive rather than us dragging them. Then it's a home visit, and we put our heads together. We're gentle, we let people think about it, give them a nice easy way of redesigning their lifestyle. We're also totally honest - about electrics and rewiring for example. Other people deliberately don't mention that to keep the price down."

Payne describes himself as a "developer cum builder" rather than a dedicated kitchen designer and is aided in the showroom by senior design consultant Mark Crossey. "We don't want to be typecast here as kitchens or bathrooms," he says as he joins us. "If people come here wanting us to build them a house we can."

Never has the term one stop shop seemed more appropriate. The store even has a basement section dedicated specifically to its contract clients and offering less expensive Sheraton kitchens. The retail and contract sides are now split 50/50 and the firm has just completed a harbour-side project involving 78 properties.

The idea of Eastbourne as the blue rinse capital of the UK is changing, the pair suggest. Unlike Brighton, the area features many large houses not yet converted into flats. That means big value contracts with average spend on the kitchen side something like £35,000. On the bathroom side it's £10,000-£12,000.

"In Eastbourne, you have very defined socio economic groupings," Payne explains. "We feel if we get someone coming in, we can offer something from £15,000 to whatever. We don't terrify anyone; if you start at £50,000 they'll look in the window and not want to set foot in here. We didn't want to be elitist."

The displays are carefully set out with the least expensive by the entrance. Customers follow a pre-planned tour from here, each kitchen being a little more expensive than the last until they finally reach Keller's premium range. With 19 kbb specialists in the town, the store seeks to offer superior design rather than attempting to compete on price. Its deal with Keller is exclusive for East Sussex although Payne is adamant that he and Crossey dictate what they display with no outside interference.

Centre stage

With just three staff, the weekends in particular can be busy but the pair reckon they've worked out a successful way round it. "Mark and I have fairly strong personalities," he laughs. "I've been here on a Saturday with two or three couples looking round and you end up almost doing a little performance. Work it right and all three can start chatting and you can get an awful lot of ideas from what they're saying to each other."

Payne's choice of suppliers, he says, originally rested largely on their attitude to him. "When we went to various exhibitions, I based an awful lot of my decisions on their reaction to me. At the time I was just Joe Bloggs who might be starting a showroom. The reaction was interesting; some people were more interested in hiding each other's mobile phones, others were quite intense in their level of interest in us. They were the ones we went with. This is a serious business."

Crossey furthers the explanation: "Matki were also chosen because they were top of the market and it's nice to deal with a British company. Vitra are Turkish but offer very good value for the money. We don't want to pay through the nose for it because our clients won't. You might be able to get away with it in London but not here. The Vitra rep is really good; if you get a bad rep it can be a big part of the decision making process. If you're not getting the back-up it puts us in an invidious position."

On the kitchen side, Crossey says Franke was simply too widely available to be considered. "We'd like some support too and Franke don't offer that anymore. You can get it cheaper on the internet so why should I display it? With Blanco they keep bringing out new products and they have a Studio Line brochure so it means we can compete with the sheds and the larger showrooms."

Despite predicting a turnover this year of around £5m, the pair suggest the market will remain tough. "It's tight," says Crossey, "and people are reluctant to spend a lot of money. Since last August there aren't the number of enquiries coming through - since America sneezed and everyone got a cold. And then Northern Rock went bust and the confidence has completely gone."

Payne agrees: "We talk with developers who buy from us and I think the market is going to be flat on the building side. But in economic terms, if there's a scarcity of product the price goes up and in the South East there's a scarcity of land so the price stays up. I'm happy with that, I don't like the boom and bust. We may not have as many people coming in but the orders we're getting are of a higher value."