M&S leads high street bounce back
Good news from the high street, Marks and Spencer has announced that it is to expand and hire an additional 4,000 staff. Whilst other high street retailers have suffered over the last few months it seems that M&S has managed to turn its business around finally after many false starts.
Like for like sales in the 13 weeks to the beginning of the month where up 8.2%. First quarter food sales climbed 5.8%, while clothing and homeware increased by 10.5%.
M&S has had a number of false starts over the past few years, but new management have improved the offerings to customers, turned around morale at the company. At the same time the company took a bold move to start advertising for the first time in its history, spending £45m on a very well received campaign that included both young and older models – including sixties fashion icon, Twiggy.
M&S have also increased and promoted its food only outlets – branded Simply Food – it expects its market share to increase to 5% up from its current 4.1%. M&S have aggressively pushed these outlets into unique markets including sell at Motorway (Freeway) service stations.
During its downturn in 2000 M&S closed most of its European stores, sending Parisians into a panic about where they could get such simple British staples as the sausage, bacon and of course, the M&S sandwich. The company now feels confident again and is looking to expand into overseas markets trading off its brand through franchising. It expects to open one store every week at least for the next three years, which will take its number of overseas stores to 350. Certainly this correspondent takes umbrage at being able to buy plain M&S biscuits (cookies) in Bangkok of all places.
Before its downfall in 2000 M&S had made disastrous inroads into the USA with the purchase of upmarket men’s clothing institution, Brooks Brothers. Before unloading it to the Italian billionaire Claudio del Vecchio’s Retail Brand Alliance.
M&S was up 5.5 at 588.5 pence at 13:16 on Tuesday.
Source
Sales boost keeps M&S recovery on track Independent
UK retailer M&S says recovery on track Reuters