Making his Marc

It really was the start of the new regime at M&S today. Two new faces at the table presenting the interims - CEO Marc Bolland and FD Alan Stewart - and only the most fleeting of appearances from Stuart Rose, who slipped out quietly at the end before anyone had a chance to chat to him.

As predicted, the numbers weren’t bad at all but all everyone was interested in was Bolland’s plans for the business, and he certainly took the opportunity to spell out his plans with a marathon two hour session for the journalists following an earlier presentation to the analysts.

But a lot of it was less radical than it seemed, and Bolland himself seemed to acknowledge that when he referenced an obscure 70s song, by someone called Kevin Ayers in case you’re interested. It goes like this:

There’s nothing new around the sun,
Everything you think of has been done,
All been done before your time,
Sometime or another,
By someone and his brother, yeah yeah.

Take for example the much vaunted bonfire of the brands, where Bolland was going to declutter the fashion floors by axing the confusing plethora of sub-brands and get rid of branded food. In fact, only one of the fashion brands is going and most of the food brands will be staying too, just with fewer SKUs.

Don’t get me wrong, everything Bolland said made a lot of sense. Moving off the Amazon platform for ecommerce is a long overdue rectification of something M&S should never have done in the first place, while concentrating on developing critical mass in a few key international markets rather than ‘putting down flags’ as Bolland put it in loads of countries is the right thing to do.

It was, as he put it, evolution not revolution. But even as evolution goes, it wasn’t very revolutionary.