BAKEWELL AND DISTRICT PROBUS CLUB THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE AGAIN OF MARKS & SPENCER
- peakadvertiser
- Nov 12, 2025
- 2 min read
To many people in this country, the name of Marks & Spencer suggests the traditional British business but, in fact, it was founded by a penniless immigrant, Michael Marks who, in 1882, arrived in England unable to speak the language but who was determined to work hard to earn a living. The story of the famous retail business which bears his name and that of his partner, Thomas Spencer, was related to the Bakewell and District Probus Club by member Stefan Andrejczuk (whose own father had similarly escaped a repressive European regime albeit six decades after Marks).
Opening his talk with a summary of his own career, Stefan explained that, on leaving school he had worked for the bookseller W.H. Smith for four years until leaving to join M&S as a management trainee. He then spent the next 23 years with the company, rising through successive promotions to a senior position.
He continued by describing the development of M&S which started with Marks trading from a stall in Leeds market. By 1894, he realised that his expanding business needed someone to help in managing it, and he therefore entered a partnership with Spencer. In spite of Marks’ death in 1907, the business, by now a limited company, continued to prosper under the chairmanship of Marks’ son, Simon. Having visited the US in the 1930s, Simon introduced many of the retail strategies that he had witnessed there. These included scientific management and efficiency, customer-centric innovation, in-house research and product development, and pioneering staff welfare schemes.
Although these helped to create a business that was the envy of others, a number of major crises hit M&S in the 1990s and early-2000s. The company failed to keep up with changing consumer preferences and trends and faced serious competition. The management had become inefficient, and it was only under the new leadership of Stuart Rose from 2004 that matters began to improve. Many store closures followed during a period of restructuring, but some momentum had been regained until the latest crisis, a cyber attack in 2025 from which recovery has been a long and expensive process.
Further details of the Bakewell and District Probus Club, including reports of earlier meetings, can be found on its website at www.bakewellprobus.org
