The John Lewis Partnership is a British retailer. It is a partnership, and all of it permanent full-time employees own a share of the business, and receive an annual profit distribution which is usually a significant fraction of their annual salary.

As of 2005 the partnership operates 27 department stores. Most of these trade as John Lewis but some trade under other names such as Peter Jones, Robert Sayle , Knight & Lee and Caleys . The stores are in a mixture of city centre and regional shopping centre locations. They are generally the largest or second largest department store in their local market. The flagship Oxford Street store remains the largest John Lewis outlet in the UK. The stores are moderately upmarket and are perceived as a bastion of the British middle class.

The partnership also owns Waitrose, an upmarket supermarket chain which trades mainly in London and the South of England, originally formed by Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor. The company was taken over by The John Lewis Partnership in 1937.

The partnership in an investor in and an operational partner of the Ocado internet grocery business, which supplies Waitrose brand food.

History

The business was founded in 1864 when John Lewis set up a draper's shop in Oxford Street, London, which developed into a department store. In 1905 he bought the Peter Jones store in Sloane Square. In 1920 his son, Spedan Lewis, expanded earlier power-sharing policies by sharing the profits the business made among the employees. The democratic nature and profit-sharing basis of the business were developed into a formal partnership structure and Spedan Lewis bequeathed the company to his employees. By May 2003, 59,485 employee-partners worked for the John Lewis Partnership.

The principle and slogan Never knowingly undersold was adopted in 1925.

The shop on Oxford Street was opened in 1960, the original buildings having been bombed. The sculpture Winged Figure by Barbara Hepworth was added in 1962.

On 27th April 1933 John Lewis Partnership bought Jessops of Nottingham. This store was the first John Lewis outside London. The store kept the name "Jessops" until 2002, when after a refurbishment the store was renamed as simply John Lewis. The partnership has also purchased a number of other regional department stores, as well as developing stores in new locations. As of 2005 it has plans to open a new department store every year for the next few years, which is probably the most ambitious expansion programme in its history.

Financial performance

The figures in the table are for 52 week periods to late January and are in British Pounds. The accounts include profits both before and after partnership bonuses. While the partnership bonus takes the place of the dividend which might be paid if John Lewis was a limited company, on the basis of the tax charges discloses in the accounts, it appears that most or all of it is accepted as tax deductible remuneration by the Inland Revenue. Profit figures before and after the partnership bonus are both shown, but arguably neither of them is strictly comparable to "profit before tax" of a limited company, which is the most widely quoted profit line in the United Kingdom, as the group might need to pay higher basic salaries if it was a listed company and therefore did not make an unusually large profit distribution to its staff,. It might fall somewhere inbetween. Net profit (after tax) is also shown; this is the profit line normally quoted for U.S. companies.

The financial section of the Partnership's website is here

Locations

Greater London

• Brent Cross
• Chelsea (under the Peter Jones name)
• Kingston
• Oxford Street

South East England

• Bluewater
• High Wycombe
• Milton Keynes
• Reading (under the Heelas name until 2001)
• Southampton (under the Tyrrell & Green name until the move at West Quay in 1998)
• Southsea (under the Knight & Lee name)
• Watford (under the Trewins name until 2001)
• Welwyn
• Windsor (under the Caleys name)

South West England

• Bristol

East of England

• Cambridge (under the Robert Sayle name)
• Norwich
• Peterborough

East Midlands

• Nottingham (under the Jessops name until 2002)

West Midlands

• Cheadle
• Solihull

Yorkshire and the Humber

• Sheffield (under the Coles Brothers name until 2002)

North West

• Liverpool (under the George Henry Lee name until 2001)

• Trafford

North East

• Newcastle

Scotland

• Aberdeen
• Edinburgh
• Glasgow

External link

• John Lewis Partnership