THE GREAT GRANNY PANTS REBELLION
Angry customers force M&S to bring back old design
‘Make the fit much worse’
LOVED by women of all ages, they take pride of place in underwear drawers up and down the country.
So when Marks & Spencer decided to change the design of its ‘granny pants’, many loyal customers got their knickers in a twist.
The High Street store made a few minor alterations to its best- selling ladies cotton briefs, making them smaller and moving the seams from the front to the side.
Previously the pants had two flat seams running diagonally from the waistband to the leg. The new side seams are raised.
But the tiny tweaks caused a big furore among shoppers, many of whom have bought the knickers for years.
After months of shoppers’ complaints going unheeded on the M&S website, one customer decided enough was enough. Dinah Barry, 67, appeared on BBC Radio 4 to plead for the return of the old pants that everyone loved best. And her impassioned plea finally did the trick.
M&S has now promised to bring back the old design – and is even sending Mrs Barry custom-made pairs until the original knickers are back on the shelves.
M&S holds 27.6 per cent of the UK lingerie market and more than one in four women buy from the store.
Last April it changed the style of its Supima Cotton & Modal No VPL pants which are sold in a pack of five for £12. They were sold with the same packaging and name meaning customers didn’t realise they had changed until they opened the packet.
There was a flurry of angry reviews on the M&S website complaining that the new versions were smaller at the sides and less comfortable.
One said: ‘ They were perfect fit before and so comfortable! Please could M&S go back to the seam at the front!’ Another added: ‘ These are awful ... seams at the side which make the fit much worse.
‘Bought several packs as I expected them to be like the old ones and I will be returning all unopened packs.
‘I agree with many other reviewers, please go back to the old front seam version, they are were great.’
This negative feedback was ignored until Mrs Barry contacted Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme You and Yours about the pants.
‘They were just extremely comfortable and I know from reviews that lots of other women felt the same,’ she told the show on Friday.
‘[On the new design] the seam arrangement had changed so that they were raised seams at the sides as most knickers are. They were also cut so that the side of the knickers was a lot smaller. They were very different.’
Faced with a fully-fledged rebellion, M&S had no choice. After revisiting the reviews and speaking to suppliers they promised to bring back the old knickers later this year. They also said they would make Mrs Barry a bespoke set in the old style as a gesture of goodwill.
Yesterday Mrs Barry, who lives in Enfield, North London, said: ‘I’ve been buying these knickers from M&S for at least ten years.
‘I’ve had friends contacting me since I went on Radio 4 to say how glad they are they have scrapped the redesign.’
An M&S spokesman said: ‘Our loyal customers are very important to us. We looked into this and decided to change the knickers back to the original style lines following her valuable feedback.’