November 2002

British American Tobacco is the latest company to offer its work force the services of Jumpleads, the specialist shopping portal that targets people at work. Already BAT says that 40 per cent of the staff at its Globe House site in central London have signed up for the system.

Jumpleads combines the concepts of Web portal and collection point in a single service. Shoppers buy online from a selection of partner retailers, who include big names such as Argos and WH Smith, and goods are then dropped off at a predetermined point, which could be their place of work or a designated external location. At big companies Jumpleads will actually put in its own staff to man the "Jumplocal" reception point.

The service is effectively free to the shoppers, since Jumpleads takes its remuneration through a commission from the retailers.

Jumpleads was founded by a team from Cambridge University in 2000, starting off with seedcorn capital drummed up by students and investment by Caius College, and a pilot JumpLocal store was opened in Cambridge Science Park.