M&S

Michael Marks, born into a Polish-Jewish family in Slonim, Belarus, moved to Leeds in 1882. Speaking only basic English, Marks opened a stall in the city’s Kirkgate Market and settled on a memorable marketing slogan: ‘Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny’.

Together with a Yorkshire-born cashier named Thomas Spencer, Marks opened ‘Penny Bazaars’ in towns and cities across the country. Michael Marks died in 1907, and the business passed to Marks’s son Simon.