John Lewis will be 150 years old in May. Retail Week takes a look at some of the key moments in its history.

John Lewis’ first store, Oxford Street

John Lewis senior opened the first store on Oxford Street in London – on the same site where the flagship still stands today – on May 2nd, 1864. He built it into a successful enterprise, and his sons, John Spedan Lewis and Oswald Lewis, both went into the family business as well.

Peter Jones, Chelsea

In 1905, John Lewis senior heard the Peter Jones store might be for sale. Over Christmas that year, he took 20 £1,000 notes, walked from Oxford Street to Peter Jones, and bought it. John Spedan Lewis took over the Peter Jones store in 1914. He made an effort to employ more women and improve staff communication. He also started displaying sales figures each day so staff could see how the business was doing, improving two-way communication between him and his staff, and introducing commission-based selling. He also launched The Gazette in 1918 to further improve communication. Within five years he had converted an annual deficit of £8,000 to a profit of £20,000.

John Spedan Lewis

In 1920, Oxford Street staff were so fed up with John Lewis senior they went on strike. In the same year, Spedan, in stark contrast to his father, offered his staff their first profit share. Spedan had to keep everything he was doing at Peter Jones completely hidden from his father and ran two sets of books – his father was quite volatile, and wouldn’t have approved of his son’s business principles. The two businesses were run quite separately, and started to differ quite fundamentally. The Partnership was formally formed in 1929 when John Lewis senior died.

Early Waitrose store

The John Lewis Partnership bought Waitrose in 1937, because Spedan Lewis wanted to enter the hotel trade and needed a food business to do so. At the time it had 10 grocery stores.

Today

The retailer now operates 41 stores and turns over £4bn across the shops and website. It will open its next major flagship in Birmingham next year.