Which year was British retailer Marks & Spencer founded?

Marks & Spencer Group plc (also known as M&S) is a major British multinational retailer headquartered in Westminster, London that specialises in selling high-quality clothing, home products and food products. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. M&S currently has 959 stores across the U.K. including 615 that only sell food products.

M&S opened its first Asian store in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1960. The company expanded into Canada in 1973, and at one point had forty-seven stores across Canada. The shops in Canada were smaller than British outlets and did not carry the same selection.

Expansion into France began with shops opening in Paris at Boulevard Haussmann and Lyon in 1975, followed by a second Paris shop at Rosny 2 in 1977. Further expansion into other French and Belgian cities followed into the 1980s.

Although the Paris shops remained popular and profitable, the Western European operation as a whole did not fare as well and eighteen shops were sold in 2001. However, in April 2011, M&S changed directions again with an announcement to reopen a store that will not only sell clothing but food.

On 22 May 2018, it was confirmed that over 100 stores will have closed by 2022 in a "radical" plan. Whether more stores will close is yet to be confirmed.