The City may well be less populated nowadays, but Geoff Quinn has not noticed. As chief executive and part-owner of TM Lewin, he has been dressing City boys — and girls — in increasing numbers. Half the tailor and shirtmaker’s 70 stores lie within the M25, with a particularly dense cluster in the Square Mile, but job losses in the financial sector have not yet had an effect.

“We have not seen a drop-off. When we put our business plan together for the year, not long after Lehman Brothers, we were quite pessimistic. We were wrong,” he said. “When you go into the City you still get pushed off the pavement, you still have to queue for your sandwich and we’re not seeing anyone turning up not dressed for work.”

TM Lewin’s sales rose 23 per cent to £78 million in the year to the end of February. Since then sales have risen by a more modest 11 per cent. Earnings before interest depreciation and amortisation rose £12.7 million and are up 13 per cent in the first half. TM Lewin did not issue like-for-like sales figures or a pre-tax profit figure.

Mr Quinn, who has worked in fashion retail since he left school at 16 with an O level in pottery, believes that the company is benefiting from customers trading down from luxury brands and other shoppers switching from Marks & Spencer’s upmarket brands.

TM Lewin is highly promotional and rotates an array of special offers around a “four shirts for £100” deal.

Mr Quinn said: “We are absolutely at a sweetspot. If you told me we could go back in time to before the recession I wouldn’t do anything any differently.”

However, he is already looking beyond TM Lewin’s heartland. He plans to boost its presence in women’s wear and tailoring with standalone stores. Last year the company sold about two million shirts, but only 100,000 suits.

Yesterday it announced its first foray overseas. A franchise deal with Jay Gee, a Singaporean retailer, will bring the chain to Singapore, with plans for stores in Malaysia and Indonesia.

At home, it is to crack on opening new stores. It will open six this year, a relatively quiet year, but intends to open 15 in 2010.

Mr Quinn, 50, who led a management buyout of the company three years ago, joined the company when it had only one store, on Jermyn Street. There are no plans for him and his team to sell-up or float, despite trying to engender the rigour of financial reporting at the company.