Spedan Lewis joined his father’s John Lewis department store on Oxford Street, London, aged 19. On his 21st birthday he was given a quarter share in the business, and in 1914 assumed control of his father’s second shop, Peter Jones in Sloane Square, London.

It was around this time that he first realised that the salaries of himself, his brother and his father were the same amount of money as the combined salaries of everyone employed by the John Lewis stores. In 1909, a serious horse-riding accident meant that he could not work for nearly two years. It was during this time that he seems to have first evolved the desire to share profits with his employees, and which grew over time in scope and detail to become the underpinnings of the John Lewis Trust and John Lewis Partnership.