Marks & Spencer began with a Leeds market stall and grew into a retailer whose name became familiar across Britain. Founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer, the company built its business around clothing, food and household goods, with a strong emphasis on its own labels. Its history is not simply one of steady expansion: changing customer habits, a sharp financial downturn and repeated efforts to reshape its stores have all tested the business.
A penny bazaar takes shape in Leeds
Michael Marks, a Polish Jewish migrant, arrived in Leeds in the early 1880s. After seeking work, he met Isaac Jowitt Dewhirst, who lent him £5 to establish a penny bazaar at Kirkgate Market in 1884. Thomas Spencer, a bookkeeper working as Dewhirst’s cashier, joined Marks as a partner in 1894. The business’s beginnings were modest, but its market-stall model gave it a foundation for growth.
Marks and Spencer opened a penny bazaar in Birkenhead in 1901, then moved the original Leeds business to Manchester and added stalls elsewhere in north-west England. Spencer died in 1905 and Marks in 1907. Michael Marks’s son Simon became chairman in 1916 and led a period of expansion that included the acquisition of other penny-bazaar businesses.
The company broadened its offer over the following decades. It began selling textiles in 1926 and food in 1931. Its St Michael label, introduced in 1928, became central to the business: by 1950, virtually all goods carried the name. M&S also developed a reputation for customer service and value, including a full cash refund for unwanted goods returned with a receipt, regardless of how long before they had been bought. Its 1953 slogan, “The customer is always and completely right!”, put that approach into words.
Building a reputation in food and clothing
For much of its domestic growth, M&S relied on long-term relationships with British manufacturers and sold the great majority of its goods as British-made. Its clothing and household ranges helped establish the company as a familiar part of everyday shopping. It introduced practical product developments too: machine-washable wool appeared in 1972, while Lycra hosiery followed in 1986.
Food became another important part of the business. M&S established a Food Technology department in 1948 and improved food labelling over time, introducing sell-by dates between 1970 and 1972. In 1980, it became the first British supermarket chain to sell packaged sandwiches. Demand grew quickly, prompting the company to work with suppliers to increase production; other supermarkets followed. M&S later developed its convenience-store offer under the Simply Food name, first opening stores in Twickenham and Surbiton in 2001.
The company’s food business continued to change. Its St Michael food halls became M&S Foodhalls after the brand was dropped in 2000. It began selling a limited selection of other companies’ brands in 2006, a departure from a long-standing emphasis on its own products. In 2019, it brought its food halls, supermarkets and convenience stores together under the M&S Food brand. The imported article also highlights ready meals, fresh produce and speciality foods, but gives no specific evidence for its broader claims about M&S introducing microwaveable meals to the British market.
Expansion, change and a difficult reversal
M&S’s international growth started with stores in continental Europe in 1975 and Ireland in 1979. It expanded into Canada in 1973, eventually operating 47 shops there, but the business failed to establish itself successfully and its last Canadian stores closed in 1999. In the 1980s, the company also opened in the United States, acquiring American clothing company Brooks Brothers and food retailer Kings Food Markets in 1988.
At home, the business reached a financial high before suffering a striking reversal. In the 1997–98 financial year, pre-tax profits exceeded £1 billion. They had fallen to £145.5 million by the year ending 31 March 2001. The Wikipedia account attributes the decline in part to pressure on profit margins, the erosion of customer loyalty and M&S’s refusal to accept credit cards other than its own chargecard until 2001. Changes followed: the company began accepting credit cards, introduced the Per Una clothing range and altered its business model. Profits recovered somewhat in 2002.
The company faced further challenges in later years. Store-closure programmes reflected efforts to reduce costs and respond to falling sales and customer numbers. In 2018, M&S announced a plan to close more than 100 stores by 2022; a further plan for 30 closures over the following decade was announced in 2021. The retailer also invested in new formats and online services. In 2019, it agreed to pay up to £750 million for a 50 per cent share in Ocado Retail, becoming Ocado’s retail partner for food.
The company’s 2025 cyber incident disrupted contactless payments and click-and-collect orders around Easter. M&S confirmed the incident on 23 April and stopped taking website orders on 25 April. Online ordering resumed on 10 June, followed by click and collect on 11 August. The episode underlined how much retail now depends on digital systems, as well as on shops and supply chains.
Products, stores and the work of adaptation
M&S’s changing ranges and shop formats chart a broader transformation in British retail. The St Michael label, once used across most of the business, was retired in 2000. The company has also built individual clothing brands, including Per Una, launched in 2001 with George Davies, and acquired the Jaeger fashion brand in 2021. Its dedicated homeware shops, food halls and smaller convenience outlets have reflected attempts to serve different shopping habits rather than relying on one standard store.
Its physical presence has had to adapt alongside those products. M&S has identified older shops as more expensive to run and has set out plans for a smaller number of full-line and food stores in the UK. A prominent example is its Oxford Street store near Marble Arch. Plans to replace the building prompted a dispute over heritage, design and the environmental cost of demolition and rebuilding. In December 2024, Angela Rayner approved the demolition after a legal challenge had overturned an earlier decision to block the project. The case brought the pressures of retail redevelopment into direct contact with arguments about the historic city and embodied carbon.
The company has also developed online services. Food deliveries began with trials in 2017, and the Ocado partnership later provided an online route to M&S groceries. Its 2007 Plan A programme, described in the imported article as a set of environmental and ethical aims, is another part of its public-facing account of change. The supplied material does not establish that M&S achieved its stated ambition to become the world’s most sustainable major retailer, so that claim should not be treated as an outcome.
Why Marks & Spencer deserves a place in British Legacy
Marks & Spencer merits a place in British Legacy because its history records more than the growth of a successful shop. From the Kirkgate Market stall founded with a £5 loan, it developed a distinctive retail model based on own-label goods, relationships with manufacturers and a promise of customer service. Its St Michael label, expansion into food and role in bringing packaged sandwiches into British supermarkets show how a retailer can shape what people encounter in ordinary shopping, not only what they see in advertising.
The story is also useful because it includes setbacks as well as achievement. The collapse in profits around 2001, the closure of stores in several markets and the continuing need to adapt its physical and online business complicate any easy claim of uninterrupted success. M&S’s experience connects British retail history with changes in manufacturing, food convenience, customer expectations and the future of high streets. That record—of invention, scale, misjudgement and renewal—makes the company a meaningful part of the country’s commercial and everyday heritage.
Sources
Marks & Spencer (revision 1378284508)
Adapted in part from Marks & Spencer 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.