As Marks & Spencer’s clothing division achieved its best performance in three years, the focus on enhancing quality and style across womenswear and menswear is starting to pay off.

As Marks & Spencer’s clothing division achieved its best performance in three years, the focus on enhancing quality and style across womenswear and menswear is starting to pay off.

However, these improvements continue to be easily lost and diluted in its large department stores, prompting Verdict to propose that its international edited stores should be brought to the UK.

Upon visiting M&S’s new flagship, edited Paris stores last week, it was evident that the retailer was showcasing a very different brand image to what consumers see on their local UK high street.

Stores were uncluttered, only the best brands were present, ranges were edited, outfit building was inspiring and the general ambience felt premium and aspirational.

This allowed the product to stand out, with fashion influences coming to the fore and making stores a destination for affordable, stylish clothing.

Despite these formats having the same product offer as UK stores, this is an image that M&S has struggled to achieve in its domestic market.

While M&S targets a broad customer base in the UK, and this edited, more contemporary version of M&S wouldn’t appeal to some of its 65-plus shoppers, having such stores in major shopping hubs such as London, Manchester and Leeds, or those with a slightly younger or more affluent population, would allow the retailer to reach a new customer and win back those it has lost over the last 10 years. 

Since its food offer appeals to a large audience and non-general merchandise shoppers, using a food department to hook consumers into the smaller, edited stores is a strategy that seems to be working well in Paris and could be replicated successfully in the UK.

Moreover, while M&S would need to be very cautious not to cannibalise existing store sales, the approach would allow it to use mainline department stores and edited versions to attract different customer segments, providing an easier shopping experience and better targeted ranges, which should in turn drive dwell time and average basket size.

While its UK clothing performance is making slow progress in terms of turnover growth, underperforming the market and rivals, the advances it has made to ranges deserve to be better showcased and the image created in its new Leading Ladies campaign better reflected in stores.

Introducing edited M&S stores in the UK would allow the retailer to achieve that, so long as the brands and ranges are well suited to the local demographic and nearby rivals – enabling it to revive itself as a go-to destination for good quality and affordable style.

  • Honor Westnedge, senior retail analyst, Verdict