Lewis Group is a funny old company. It’s been around for a very long time, operating out of very humble offices in Salt River, Cape Town, selling furniture to the bottom end of the social spectrum, mainly on credit, and doing it exceptionally well.

It not only survived the pandemic but flourished as the so-called homebody economy took off as people increasingly took to working from home. But with the return of many people to their offices in the past year or so, one would intuitively have expected furniture retailers such as Lewis to have experienced a reversal of fortune. But not so. On the contrary, the group has managed to improve its results...