Debenhams plc was a British department store chain that operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, as well as franchised locations across Europe and the Asia Pacific.
The company was founded in 1778 as a single store in London and grew to 178 locations across those countries, also owning the Danish department store chain Magasin du Nord. In its final years, its headquarters were within the premises of its flagship store in Oxford Street, London. The range of goods sold included middle-to-high-end clothing, beauty, household items, and furniture.
The company suffered financial difficulties in the 21st century and entered administration twice, in April 2019 and April 2020. In November 2020, Debenhams' main concession operator Arcadia also entered administration, leading to the collapse of potential rescue talks with JD Sports and Frasers Group. As a result, Debenhams announced it would be liquidated.
The Debenhams brand and website were purchased by the online retailer Boohoo for £55M in January 2021. However, Boohoo did not retain any stores, meaning the loss of up to 12,000 jobs. Boohoo relaunched the website as Debenhams.com on 12 April 2021 under its own company, Debenhams.com Online Limited, when Debenhams' stores reopened to begin closing down sales following a relaxation of some COVID-19 restrictions. After 243 years in business, the remaining Debenhams department stores closed for the final time during May 2021.
Until 2025, Debenhams continued in the Middle East through a licensing agreement, operated by Alshaya Group.
Contents
History
18th and 19th centuries
The business was formed in 1778 by William Clark, who began trading at 44 Wigmore Street in London as a drapers' store. In 1813, William Debenham became a partner and the corporate name changed to Clark & Debenham. The shop was later renamed Cavendish House and sold drapery, silks, haberdashery, millinery, hosiery, lace, and family mourning goods. As the trade grew, the partners determined to expand the business by opening branches in Cheltenham and Harrogate.
By 1823, Clark & Debenham had opened a small drapery business at 3 Promenade Rooms, Cheltenham, selling a selection of silks, muslins, shawls, gloves, lace and fancy goods. In 1837, Clark retired from the business and Debenham took two of his most trusted staff, William Pooley and John Smith, as partners, trading in both London and Cheltenham as Debenham, Pooley & Smith. By 1840, the management of the Cheltenham branch appears to have been given to Clement Freebody, Debenham's brother-in-law. Around 1843, another branch shop was launched in Harrogate.
Extended and refurbished premises opened in Cheltenham in October 1844. Pooley and Smith retired from the business in 1851 when Debenham took his son, William, and Clement Freebody into partnership, trading as Debenham, Son & Freebody. At this time all three shops in London, Cheltenham, and Harrogate were trading in similar goods and issued a joint catalogue, called the Fashion Book, that was the basis of an extensive mail-order trade. In 1876 when Freebody retired, a new partnership, Debenham & Hewitt, was formed. George Hewitt appears to have worked at the Cheltenham store as a draper's assistant during the early 1860s but details of his subsequent career are not known. By 1883, George Hewitt was the sole owner of the Cheltenham business, Frank and William Debenham having withdrawn to manage the London store as a separate concern.
20th century
The business was incorporated as Debenhams Limited in 1905. A new headquarters building, which was designed by William Wallace and James Glen Sivewright Gibson and built by Trollope & Colls, was completed in Wigmore Street in 1908. Debenhams at this time did not operate any other department stores, but did supply to others across the country via its wholesale business. It was because of the debts owed to them through their wholesaling deals that they acquired control over Marshall & Snelgrove at Oxford Street and Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge both in London in 1919. The business at this time was run by Ernest Debenham and his close friend Frederick Oliver. In 1926, Oliver retired, and upon the advice of the Whitehall Trust, Debenhams Securities was formed to buy Oliver's share in the business, with Ernest Debenham as chair and being joined by Frederick Richmond and Maurice Wright. The business also operated the London booksellers J & E Bumpus.
However, during the mid-1920s, several new investment groups were created and started buying up regional drapers and department stores. Clarence Hatry had created the Drapery Trust in 1925, while Charterhouse Bank's company, Charterhouse Investments Trust (under Sir Arthur Wheeler, 1st Baronet), had created United Drapery Stores in 1927, and Selfridge Provincial Stores was created by James White and Gordon Selfridge in 1926. These were seen to be a threat to Debenhams' wholesale business, as the company would lose sales to these new combined groups. Frederick Richmond and Maurice Wright thought it was too late to start creating a provincial group, so started negotiations with Clarence Hatry in 1927 to purchase the Drapery Trust. By November the deal was agreed for £2,350,000, mostly funded through Hatry's company Austin Friars Trust purchasing £1,600,000 of Debenhams shares.
As part of the deal, Ernest Debenham was forced out of the business, along with his son Peter. In a letter to The Times, Ernest wrote
A month ago I had no intention of retiring from the management of Debenhams Securities. Indeed, I had every reason to hope that the connection of myself and my family with that business would be indefinitely prolonged. When the offer was made to purchase all or any of the ordinary shares in Debenhams Securities, circumstances of no interest to the general investing public compelled me to accept the offer.
The new enlarged company was offered to the public in February 1928, with the release of 2 million preference shares through merchant bank M. Samuel & Co, with the company being first listed on the London Stock Exchange later that year. In 1929, as part of his fraudulent plan to raise the cash for his deal to purchase United Steel, Hatry forged £478,100 of shares in the Drapery Trust, but by September 1929 he had confessed to his crimes. The connection of Clarence Hatry to Debenhams plunged the company into a crisis once his finances started to unravel, in addition to the Drapery Trust dividend collapsing and its export business diving due to the economy. Maurice Wright completed a rewriting of the capital in 1934, and merged the three operations, Debenhams, Debenhams Securities and Drapery Trust, slashing the company's issued capital from £15,100,000 to £6,000,000. Wright would later be made Managing Director, before becoming Chairman in 1948.
21st century
Debenhams opened its largest British store on 4 September 2003, at the new Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham. The new store contained 19,230 sq m and opened 20 years after the company closed its Birmingham city centre store due to declining trade. A private consortium named Baroness Retail Limited, comprising CVC Capital Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity and management, acquired the company in November 2003 in a leveraged buyout, for which the consortium only provided £600m of equity and added £1.2bn in debt. According to The Financial Times, the consortium "then extracted more than £1bn via property sale and leaseback agreements", before returning the business to a listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2006.
On 8 August 2006, it was announced that Debenhams would buy the leaseholds of nine of the 11 Roches Stores department stores in Ireland for €29 million. Under the deal, the stores, including those in St. Patrick's Street in Cork and Henry Street in Dublin would be rebranded as Debenhams stores. The Roche family retained the ownership of the stores, and Debenhams became the new tenants.
The company purchased the brand name and stock of Principles in March 2009 after the business entered administration. Principles operated concessions within 121 Debenhams stores, and was subsequently relaunched by Ben de Lisi as part of the Designers at Debenhams range. In November 2009, Debenhams acquired the Danish department store group Magasin du Nord for £12.3 million. The company operated six stores in Denmark under the Magasin brand.
In July 2010 Debenhams purchased the 115 Faith concessions trading within its stores, after Faith entered administration. In April 2012 the company announced it would be building 14 new stores, and was in negotiations over a further 25 sites in the UK. Debenhams agreed to become the anchor store at the Riverside shopping centre in Shrewsbury. By September 2012, the company announced that like-for-like sales had risen by 3.3% in the six months up to that date.
Debenhams moved to a new headquarters in 2013, in Brock Street, London built by British Land. The company leased 174,500 square feet (16,000 m2) of office space from British Land for 25 years. The company began a refurbishment of its flagship store in Oxford Street, London in 2013, which involved the installation of 180,000 aluminium tiles on the exterior of the building that appears to ripple with the wind. An existing floor was also converted to become a trading floor. The total cost of the refurbishment was in the region of £40 million, of which Debenhams contributed £25 million. The owner of the building, British Land, also contributed towards the cost. The refurbishment was due to be completed by February 2014.
Products and services
In 1993 the company introduced the 'Designers at Debenhams' brand, the creation of then CEO Belinda Earl, Ben de Lisi and Spencer Hawken. The idea introduced designer names and brands such as Jasper Conran, John Rocha, Butterfly by Matthew Williamson, H! by Henry Holland, Star by Julien Macdonald, Frost French, Janet Reger, Ted Baker, St George by Duffer, Jeff Banks, and Ben de Lisi. The company also started selling goods under a number of brand names that it owned. In 2010, Debenhams announced the launch of four new designer names to its fashion range: Jonathan Saunders, Preen, Jonathan Kelsey, and Roksanda Ilincic.
Stores also contained concessions whereby other retailers could trade. Brands in stores include Oasis, Coast, Phase Eight and Warehouse. In June 2014, the company announced a trial of Sports Direct concessions in its Harrow and Southsea stores, which if successful would be expanded to other stores. This followed the purchase of a stake in Debenhams by Mike Ashley, the owner of Sports Direct, in January 2014. Later that year, Debenhams also launched trials of Costa Coffee and Mothercare concessions within stores.
In October 2016, the company announced it would begin to focus less on clothing and more on food, beauty products and gifts. It also hired the former lighting buying team of collapsed rival BHS to begin introducing new lighting departments in stores. Debenhams followed this in December 2016 with a plan to discontinue its Betty Jackson Black ladies fashion brand, and significantly reduce its Jeff Banks menswear range in favour of expanding the Hammond & Co. brand.
The company operated retail websites in the UK and Ireland, as well as a mobile-enabled website and mobile apps that allowed customers to shop the online range and scan product barcodes in store.
Debenhams provided store card and credit card services, operated by NewDay. Insurance products were also provided under the Debenhams brand by other financial companies. Debenhams also operated bureaux de change in selected stores. The company ran a loyalty card programme, branded the Debenhams Beauty Club, where customers could collect points with the purchase of health and beauty products.
Former stores and franchises
United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland
In 1956, Debenhams owned or controlled through its subsidiary, the Drapery Trust, the following businesses, which it rated in different classes:
In addition, the business ran several wholesale businesses including, amongst others Debenhams Wholesale, Chamberlins, DLMS and St Aldate Warehouse.
In 1979, it was reported that Debenhams operated 70 department stores in England, 2 in Wales and 1 in Scotland, though the following still operated under their original names:
Swan & Edgar, London
Harvey Nichols, London
Browns, Chester
Corders, Ipswich
Garlands, Norwich
Plummers, Southampton
Hills, Hove
The company also operated 33 Cresta Fashion stores, 22 Caters Supermarkets, 109 Lotus shoeshops, toy and sports retailer Hamleys, Greens Cameras & Hifi and News Dimension, a home furniture and furnishings company.
As of December 2020, the company owned and operated 124 stores in the United Kingdom, and 7 under the Magasin du Nord brand in Denmark. Debenhams occupied the most sites of any of the traditional department store groups in the UK. The majority of the original trading names of the stores, in each of their respective locations, were replaced with the "Debenhams" name during the 1970s. All the department stores in the group traded as "Debenhams" (although the store in Chester was still dual-signed as Debenhams and Browns of Chester).
In April 2020, stores operated in Ireland by Debenhams Ireland ceased trading with the loss of nearly 2,000 jobs.
International franchises
Debenhams only operates two stores in Iran. The Alshaya Group previously held the licence to Debenhams across the Middle East and operated these stores between 1997 and 2025.
The first Debenhams store in the Middle East opened in 1997 in Bahrain.
Debenhams entered Iran in 2009 with a Tehran store, the stores are operated in a franchise partnership with Lilian Mode. There were five stores across the country by 2015.
The brand exited Egypt in 2024.
Debenhams exited Saudi Arabia in 2025 closing its stores at Riyadh Park (closed March) and Granada Mall (closed April). The Avenues Mall (Phase 4) store in Kuwait also closed the same year.
The Dubai Mall and Mirdiff City Centre stores, including their Debenhams Cosmetics stores, were closed in June 2025.
On 26 November 2025, Debenhams (Alshaya Group operations) announced on Instagram that it would be exiting the Middle East, the post was then taken down and a Debenhams spokesperson stated " the business is assessing ways to serve its Middle East customers going forward."
Debenhams opened in Malaysia in 2003 first at Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur. In 2006 Debenhams ceased trading in Malaysia but returned in 2008 after finding a new master franchiser. The stores were still operating in 2019 at The Curve and Gurney Paagon but later closed.
The first store in the Philippines opened in 2005. The brand was previously operated by the SSI Group and were located at Shangri-la Plaza, Abreeza, and a shop-in-shop inside Rustan's Glorietta 3.
In partnership with Mitra Adiperkasa, Debenhams operated in Indonesia, opening a store at Plaza Indonesia in 2003. They eventually opened their second store at Supermal Karawaci, a flagship store at Senayan City in 2006, followed by a store at Lippo Mall Kemang opened in 2012, which closed later. On 31 December 2017, their flagship store at Senayan City was closed and with this, the brand left Indonesia.