Prescient indeed was Toby Blackwell. Faced with a continuing loss at the book-selling business founded by his grandfather and determined to keep the “family name over the door”, he moved the goalposts.

He announced he would follow the John Lewis model and give the business away to the staff.

And he did that long before Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s call last week for the UK to become “more of a John Lewis economy”.

But giving Blackwell’s away is not proving easy because both Mr Blackwell, 83, chairman of the company, and the employees want to get the business back into profit before completing the deal — a situation they hope to bring about by 2013.

This raises delicate issues because in order to achieve that goal, redundancies have been found necessary.

Mr Blackwell has been very encouraging of the Government “discovering John Lewis”, as he puts it, and remains passionate about the exercise of transforming Blackwell’s along those lines, saying he wants to “reward his very, very important staff with a return on their investment”.

In this he is following in the footsteps of John Spedan Lewis, son of the founder of the retailer that now owns John Lewis department stores and the Waitrose supermarket chain — but with a difference.

John Spedan Lewis was operating from a position of strength, in that his business was profitable and Mr Blackwell’s (at present) is not.

Mr Spedan Lewis (1885-1963) was a true visionary in the world of business who, together with his wife Sarah — a graduate of Somervile College, Oxford, who became a buyer in the company and went on to become deputy chairman — transformed the firm he inherited into a model of co-ownership.

In two transfers, in 1929 and 1950, he gave his shares away to a trust. Now, staff influence company policy through an elected council that acts according to constitutional rules.

These state, for instance, that the highest paid staff member must not be paid more than 75 times the average wage of a shop assistant.

And, of course, Mr Spedan Lewis insisted staff would always be paid an annual share of profits and that their pay would be regulated along pre-determined lines according to the constitution.

In 2010-11 the 75,000 partners received £194m in bonuses on pre-tax profits of £431m.

John Lewis must be doing something right since its 36 stores, plus its Waitrose supermarket chain, remain successful even at a time when many retailers are in decline.

It came into being in 1864 when Spedan’s father, John, opened an Oxford Street store. It coined the slogan “never knowingly undersold” in 1925.

If all goes to plan, its projected Oxford store will form the centrepiece of the new £330m Westgate development scheduled to open in 2017.

Now Mr Blackwell is seeking to emulate John Spedan Lewis. But what can he do when, faced with fierce competition from online book sellers, there are no profits at Blackwell’s to share?

Blackwell’s spokesman Katie Perrior said: “The progression to a John Lewis-style partnership takes time — it is something Toby has his lawyers working on night and day.

“In the meantime, Toby has met with several people who have inside knowledge of how John Lewis works and what role staff have in a new partnership-style model and has been drawing up plans for when it happens.”

She added: “There is, of course, the small matter of bringing the company back into profit before he hands anything over — staff have been very understanding about this process.

“To get to this point, redundancies were made last year so the company was as efficient as possible in order to return to profitability and work towards the partnership.”

Blackwell’s 2011 accounts are due to be published in April, but in 2010 the bookseller made a loss of £5.7m, albeit down from £10.2m the year before.

Mr Blackwell said then: “We are marginally off-profit, but we are getting there. Now we must wait for about one more year.”

He added the bookselling business — faced with competition from online sellers, ebooks, and print-on-demand — was “unquestionably” now going through greater upheavals than at any time in his long career.

In 2006, he loaned the bookselling company £8m, after it clocked up losses of £10.1m in 2005 — the year in which he ousted his son, Phillip, as chairman.

Last year, the company moved out of its headquarters, Beaver House, in Hythe Bridge Street, with the loss of 25 jobs — with the building now sub-let to Oxford University.

Blackwell’s was founded at its present address at 50 Broad Street in 1879 by Toby Blackwell’s grandfather, Benjamin Henry Blackwell.

Toby Blackwell’s father, Sir Basil Blackwell, was born above the Broad Street shop.