Spedan's Partnership
The Story of John Lewis and Waitrose

Tells how a tiny Oxford Street fabrics shop grew to become the most successful employee-owned business in Britain.

Now, exactly a hundred years after Spedan's original idea, the Partnership employs over 70,000 people and the annual Bonus paid on top of each Partner's salary has averaged 16 per cent over the last fifty years. Both John Lewis and Waitrose constantly top customer opinion polls, and Waitrose, nearly sold off in the lean years, now achieves sales and profits greater than its parent. This book explores how it all happened, and looks at the unique organisation of a business whose stakeholders are its own employees, not anonymous external shareholders. The global banking meltdown has revealed the deep-rooted flaws in a society where capital employs labour, where there is little real accountability to hold an enterprise's managers in check. But here is a highly successful business in which labour employs capital, its managers accountable to its employees. Cooperatives have been unfairly derided for years, yet the 'John Lewis' model thrives. Why?