Next plc
British retailer
Next plc, trading as Next and styled as NEXT, is a British multinational clothing, footwear, and home products retailer, which has its headquarters in Enderby, England. It has around 700 stores, of which about 500 are in the United Kingdom, and 200 across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Next is the largest clothing retailer by sales in the United Kingdom, having overtaken Marks & Spencer in early 2012, and then again in 2014.
History
Hepworth
The company was founded by Joseph Hepworth in Leeds in 1864 as a tailor under the name of Joseph Hepworth & Son. Initially Hepworth was in partnership with James Rhodes, but the partnership was dissolved in 1872. On his own, Hepworth expanded the company rapidly, becoming a pioneer of the development of chain stores in Britain. By 1884 the company had 100 outlets. For much of its history Hepworth was predominantly in the ready-to-wear suit market. In 1963, the company brought in the celebrated Savile Row designer Hardy Amies to help revitalise its ready-to-wear suit collection.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Next plc” is british retailer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Next, British and retailer, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q246655. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2014, 1864 and 1872.
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This entry incorporates text from “Next plc” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.