What is FF&E procurement?

FF&E procurement involves sourcing, purchasing, and managing furniture, fixtures, and equipment for interior projects such as workplaces, hotels, and residential developments.

Who uses FF&E procurement services?

FF&E procurement services are used by workplace developers, interior designers, hospitality operators, and residential developers.

Does Dodds & Shute provide sustainable procurement services?

Yes, we specialise in sustainable procurement, carbon-aware sourcing, and supply chain transparency for furniture and interior projects.

Sustainability

Notes from the Modus B Corp panel

Last month, Modus Furniture brought together members of the B Corp community and the wider built environment sector to discuss how companies are applying the updated B Corp Standards in practice.

Our Head of Sustainability, Lucy Arndt, joined the panel alongside Alastair Roberts of Hawkins\Brown, John Wright of Stride Treglown, Phil Towle of The Furniture Practice, and Shreya Nambiar of Oktra, chaired by Lucy Crane, Head of Sustainability and B Corp Lead at Modus. Several themes came out of the discussion. These are the ones that resonated most from a Dodds & Shute perspective.

Last month, Modus Furniture brought together members of the B Corp community and the wider built environment sector to discuss how companies are applying the updated B Corp Standards in practice.

Our Head of Sustainability, Lucy Arndt, joined the panel alongside Alastair Roberts of Hawkins\Brown, John Wright of Stride Treglown, Phil Towle of The Furniture Practice, and Shreya Nambiar of Oktra, chaired by Lucy Crane, Head of Sustainability and B Corp Lead at Modus. Several themes came out of the discussion. These are the ones that resonated most from a Dodds & Shute perspective.

Reuse

Reuse came up repeatedly, and for good reason. Our net zero target is 2035. Reaching it will require more than incremental change. It means a material shift in how we work, including significant moves towards sourcing reused and remanufactured products for our clients. There is no credible path to net zero on that timeline without rethinking how product is specified at scale.

Carbon as a metric

Focusing on carbon alone misses things, and it is worth being specific about what. Beyond the community and ecological impacts others on the panel raised, a carbon-first approach creates a structural bias towards large multinational manufacturers, who have the resources to calculate the carbon footprint of entire product collections. Many independent designers, small businesses, and local manufacturers do not have that capacity.

That is not a minor gap. It concentrates spend in large organisations rather than in businesses that may have greater impact on local economies and communities. Any serious sustainability framework needs to sit with that tension honestly.

Supply chain accountability

When the question of monitoring human rights and environmental impact was raised, our answer comes back to the audit programme. Genuinely understanding a supply chain, how and where products are made, and building that into procurement decisions, is central to responsible sourcing. Taking manufacturer claims at face value is not enough.

The business case for B Corp

On the question of communicating B Corp's value to a board or business decision-makers, the direct revenue impact feels impossible to quantify. But that is not really where the value sits. Certification has given us a rigorous third-party framework to measure our own practice against, one that gave us the confidence to speak more seriously externally about sustainability because we had a credible, independently verified basis for doing so. It has been significant for staff retention and recruitment, and it gives us a structure to grow against rather than simply marking our own homework. There is also published research showing that B Corps grow faster than non-B Corps, which is worth having in hand when making the business case internally.

Client alignment

A question was raised about whether panellists are looking beyond supply chains to the full value chain, including client relationships. For Dodds & Shute, this is something we are starting to work through. Aligning with clients who share our values is increasingly important, and not just as an ethical position. Reaching our goals, on sustainability and on the kind of business we want to be, is harder without that alignment.

Collective action

The final point of the session felt like the right one to end on. The updated B Corp Standards include a new section on collective action, and it reflects something important about what it actually means to use business as a force for good (which is the B Corp motto).

Applying the Standards is no longer about internal performance alone, but also about shared responsibility. Working in isolation has limits. If the goal is genuine movement on the issues that matter, then the question cannot only be how we become the best version of ourselves. It also has to be how we work with others to go further than any of us could go alone. The new Standards build that thinking into the framework. That feels like the right direction, if we truly want to use our business as a force for good.