John Lewis Partnership
The John Lewis Partnership is a department store and supermarket business trading in the United Kingdom. The department stores trade under various names including John Lewis, Peter Jones, George Henry Lee and Bainbridge.
Waitrose is an upmarket supermarket division of the company which trades mainly in London and the South East 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 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 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. By May 2003, 59,485 employee-partners worked for the John Lewis Partnership.
The flagship Oxford Street store remains the largest John Lewis outlet in the UK.
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