Dr Ian Jones is part of a multidisciplinary team which has successfully safeguarded the business archives of the iconic department store chain Debenhams for future reference and research.
When Debenhams went into administration in 2020, the Crisis Management Team (CMT) for Business Archives moved quickly to safeguard its archives – an important record of more than 200 years of retail history.
The CMT is a group of professional archivists and academics whose purpose is to co-ordinate efforts to preserve business records in cases of liquidations, administrations, takeovers and other circumstances where records may be in danger. Dr Ian Jones, Lecturer at Sheffield University Management School, is one of the academics on the team.
Debenhams’ archive includes early company diaries, advertisements, store photographs, staff records, and even examples of staff uniforms and own-brand products.
Founded in 1778 as a single shop in London, at its peak Debenhams had department stores in 178 locations worldwide. Its brand and website are now owned by Boohoo.
The cooperative, cross-sector effort to save the archive involved support from partners in heritage and business institutions including the Business Archives Council, The National Archives, FRP Advisory, Hilco, Janice Tullock Associates and South West Heritage Trust.
The collection has now been permanently rehoused at the City of Westminster Archives Centre.
Two case studies detailing the collaborative rescue operation and showcasing highlights from the collection are now published on the Managing Business Archives website. One of these details the process of how the archive was saved, and was authored by Dr Jones.
Dr Ian Jones, Lecturer in Strategy, said: “I'm very proud to have been part of this collaborative effort to preserve Debenhams archives for future generations. Here at the University of Sheffield, our motto is Rerum Cognoscere Causas (to discover the causes of things) and working with partners across sectors to preserve the historical records of a national retail institution really speaks to that.”
The City of Westminster Archives Centre is working towards cataloguing the collection so it can be accessible to researchers.
Read The National Archives’ story here.