John Lewis began in 1864 as a drapery shop on Oxford Street, London. Its history is now entwined with a distinctive business structure: the John Lewis Partnership, a company held in trust for the benefit of its employees. The store’s expansion, its changing name and the rise and retreat of its price pledge all tell a story of British retail adapting to new places, customers and pressures.
An Oxford Street shop grows
John Lewis opened his first shop on Oxford Street in 1864. The business grew beyond its original site in 1905, when Lewis acquired Peter Jones, the department store in Sloane Square. His eldest son, John Spedan Lewis, later developed the idea of a partnership while in charge of Peter Jones. He began the John Lewis Partnership in 1920; its in-house magazine, the Gazette, had first appeared in 1918.
The department store business expanded beyond London in the 1930s. In 1933, the partnership bought Jessop & Son in Nottingham, its first store outside the capital. The business acquired Selfridge Provincial Stores in 1940, adding a group of 16 suburban and provincial department stores, including Cole Brothers in Sheffield, George Henry Lee in Liverpool and Robert Sayle in Cambridge.
Other parts of the group’s history show how the business developed beyond department-store retail. In 1937 it took over Waitrose, then a grocery company with ten shops and 160 employees. In 1953, the partnership acquired Heelas, a Reading department store that retained its name until becoming John Lewis in 2001. That year it also bought textile manufacturer Herbert Parkinson, which continues to make duvets, pillows and furnishings for John Lewis.
Partnership as a business structure
John Lewis & Partners is the trading name of John Lewis plc, part of John Lewis Partnership plc. The partnership is held in a trust on behalf of its employees, who are the trust’s beneficiaries. This is more precise than describing every member of staff as a co-owner who shares profits in the same way: the store’s distinctive identity comes from its place within the partnership and its employee-benefit structure.
Spedan Lewis established the John Lewis brand in 1929. The group also developed shared ways of buying and selling: it became the first department-store group in the UK to adopt central buying, and in 1937 introduced the Jonell(e) name for its own-brand merchandise. The name was gradually replaced by John Lewis from 2001. Today, John Lewis products also include labels such as Collection by John Lewis, John Lewis & Co. and Collection Weekend by John Lewis.
The company’s footprint has changed over time. In 1972, the relocated Jessops in Nottingham became the first John Lewis store built as part of a shopping centre. The Oxford Street branch remains the partnership’s flagship and largest store. Its building, significantly damaged during the Second World War, was rebuilt in 1953. A major refurbishment completed in 2007 included a restaurant, brasserie and bistro; a John Lewis Food Hall from Waitrose opened in the basement that October.
New stores, new ways to shop
Expansion continued into the twenty-first century, though not every plan came to fruition. A Cardiff store opened in 2009 as part of the St David’s Centre development; it is the partnership’s only department store in Wales. In 2011, a John Lewis and a Waitrose opened at Westfield Stratford City, beside the Olympic Park. The following year, the first smaller-format city-centre branch opened in Exeter, offering core home, electrical and fashion ranges alongside access to the wider selection online and through click and collect.
In Birmingham, a new department store opened on 24 September 2015 as part of the Grand Central development at New Street station. John Lewis had announced it in 2011, but construction complications delayed the opening. The store closed in 2020 amid financial challenges. Other proposed developments also faltered: plans for a large store in Belfast were reversed after a legal challenge, while a proposed Brighton store was abandoned in 2017.
The business also tested ways to bring its offer to customers beyond its traditional stores. In 2014, it opened a small airside shop at Heathrow Terminal 2; the Heathrow and St Pancras travel-hub stores did not reopen after the first Covid-19 lockdown. A limited John Lewis homeware concession opened at Arnotts in Dublin in 2016 and was later reduced in size. Five shop-in-shop branches in Myer department stores in Australia, focused on homeware, had all closed by 2020.
In 2018 the retailer adopted the name John Lewis & Partners, alongside a similar rebrand for Waitrose. Its diagonal graphic motif, created in 1990 by British design consultancy Lloyd Northover, remains part of its visual identity; Pentagram gave it a minor refresh in 2000. The Christmas television adverts, first launched in 2007, became a recurring feature of British seasonal advertising. Campaigns including The Bear and the Hare, Monty’s Christmas and Man on the Moon used emotional stories and music that sometimes reached high positions in the UK Singles Chart.
A promise tested by a changing market
“Never Knowingly Undersold” became one of John Lewis’s best-known price pledges. The policy began in 1925 and promised to match or beat lower prices from national high-street competitors. It was not an unbroken promise: the company ended it in 2022, saying that it had become less relevant in an increasingly online market. In September 2024, the retailer announced that it would bring the pledge back.
The store’s history also includes periods of considerable commercial strain. In 2018, the partnership reported that its profits, including Waitrose, had fallen sharply. The company linked the decline to lower margins and deeper discounting, including the effect of matching prices under its pledge. The pandemic then brought temporary closures: John Lewis announced in March 2020 that all its stores would close from 24 March. In July, it said eight of its 50 department stores would close, putting 1,300 jobs at potential risk; eight more closures were announced in March 2021. For the previous year, the partnership reported losses of £517 million.
In January 2024, John Lewis announced plans to cut up to 11,000 jobs over five years as part of a strategy to return the business to profitability. Later that year it said first-half losses had nearly halved, and in November the partnership confirmed plans to invest £800 million in the John Lewis brand over the following four years, with a substantial amount intended for its stores. These announcements describe a retailer working to reshape its business, not a settled account of what that effort will achieve.
Why John Lewis & Partners deserves a place in British Legacy
John Lewis & Partners belongs in British retail history because its story joins a long-lived department-store name to a particular form of employee benefit. The business began with one Oxford Street drapery shop, then grew through acquisitions and new branches into a national retailer. Its relationship with the John Lewis Partnership gives that expansion a distinctive context: the partnership is held in trust for the benefit of its employees. Spedan Lewis’s role in developing the partnership and establishing the John Lewis brand makes the business model part of the company’s history, not merely a label attached to its shops.
The wider record shows how a major British retailer has had to change while retaining a recognisable identity. John Lewis expanded beyond London, became part of shopping-centre developments, experimented with smaller stores and overseas concessions, and built a prominent place in seasonal advertising. Its price pledge, introduced in 1925, ended and then returned, reflecting the difficulty of carrying a familiar promise into an online market. Store closures, reported losses and plans for renewed investment belong in the same account as expansion and cultural recognition. Together, these details make John Lewis & Partners worth remembering: not as an unchanging emblem of retail success, but as a British institution whose history reveals the possibilities and pressures of department-store commerce and employee-benefit ownership.
Sources
John Lewis & Partners — Wikipedia revision 1374834023 · John Lewis & Partners — Wikipedia
Adapted in part from John Lewis & Partners by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.