ABSTRACT
Social Revolution as Business Mission By the mid-twenties the four brothers-in-law (Simon Marks, Israel Sieff, Harry Sacher, and Norman Laski) who had built the penny bazaars of 1915 into a major chain of variety stores owned a successful business. They might have been satisfied to rest on their laurels and to enjoy their considerable wealth. Instead they decided - following a trip to America by Simon Marks in 1924 in the course of which he carefully studied Sears, Roebuck - to rethink the purpose and mission of their business. The business of Marks & Spencer, they decided, was not retailing. It was social revolution.
