Marks and Spencer: who wants to be Mrs M&S?
“Every new M&S boss has a bright idea for fixing the clothing business,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times. “Steve Rowe has the best one yet” – he’s planning to make the clobber “wearable”. Who would have thought of it? Something radical is certainly needed. Shares in the retailer suffered their biggest one-day fall since 2009 last week after it revealed a 2.9% decline in like-forlike UK clothing sales in the year to March. Pre-tax profits overall were down by 19.5%.
Rowe spooked investors by warning that his turnaround strategy could hit profits further in the short term, but if he rights the ship, who cares, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Indeed, the most “encouraging” part of Rowe’s strategy rejig is that, after five successive years of decline, “he has given up the pretence that a return to growth in clothing lies around the next corner”. Instead of “chasing fashion trends”, he wants to “arrest the loss of market share in clothing” by majoring on cheaper, more accessible lines. It sounds like a plan that might appeal to the chain’s core customers – fiftysomething women. But he’d have done himself a favour if he’d spared us the patronising talk about how he wants to “cherish Mrs M&S”.
That was a real PR blunder, agreed Rowan Pelling in The Sunday Telegraph. “I’m all for being ‘cherished and celebrated’.” But if you want to appeal to middle-aged women, make them feel stylish and youthful – not like staid old frumps that “no amount of HRT can resuscitate”. Rowe’s message of a return to quality basics is welcome, but the chain still seems “fossilised in Mrs Slocombe’s era”. My generation likes value cashmere, well-cut jeans and classic white shirts. “If Uniqlo can do it, why can’t M&S?”