Introduction to John Lewis

The John Lewis Partnership is a visionary and successful way of doing business, boldly putting the happiness of Partners at the centre of everything it does. It's the embodiment of an ideal, the outcome of nearly a century of endeavour to create a different sort of company, owned by Partners dedicated to serving customers with flair and fairness.

All 69,000 permanent staff are Partners who own 26 John Lewis department stores, 187 Waitrose supermarkets (www.waitrose.com), an online and catalogue business, John Lewis Direct (www.johnlewis.com), a direct services company, Greenbee (www.greenbee.com), a production unit and a farm with a turnover of nearly £6.8 billion last year. Partners share in the benefits and profits of a business that puts them first.

When our founder, John Spedan Lewis, set up the Partnership, he was careful to create a governance system, set out in our Constitution, that would be both commercial allowing us to move quickly to stay ahead in a competitive industry, and democratic giving every Partner a voice in the business they co-own.