Marc Bolland may have mixed feelings about the unfolding disaster at his old company Morrison’s, but he can be proud of how M&S Food has performed.

Marc Bolland may have mixed feelings about the unfolding disaster at his old company Morrison’s, but he can be proud of how M&S Food has performed.

Today has certainly underlined how difficult life is for the big UK supermarket chains, with Morrison’s revealing a 5.6% like-for-like sales decline over the last five weeks (despite trading two extra days) and Tesco down 2.4% like-for-like over the last six weeks, making Sainsbury’s modest 0.2% like-for-like growth in the Christmas quarter look positively good.

The accelerating channel shift to both more online shopping and more convenience store shopping is causing big problems for even the best equipped operators in the supermarket industry and it is crucifying those that have been left behind, like Morrison’s.

Lest we forget, Marc Bolland was still running Morrison’s towards the end of 2009 and his successor as chief executive, Dalton Philips, inherited a business with no exposure to what turned out to be the fastest growing channels in the industry, namely online grocery shopping and convenience stores.

But you make your own luck in this world and Marc Bolland would, quite rightly, grumble that his own inheritance at Marks & Spencer in early 2010 left a lot to be desired, not least in the area of E-Commerce and IT systems, so perhaps people shouldn’t throw stones.

And one of his first decisions as chief executive at M&S was to wisely ditch the 400 grocery brands that his predecessor had introduced in order to make the M&S Food business into more of a one-stop supermarket.

By focusing M&S Food on being a quality specialist in innovative fresh and chilled foods, Marc Bolland has successfully insulated the business from the chill winds sweeping through the supermarket industry, as online grocery and convenience store growth cannibalises a chunk of the big superstores’ trade and the astonishing rise of Aldi and Lidl saps more and more of what is left.

It is telling that in the last couple of weeks before Christmas, M&S was able to ease off the promotional button in food and trade increasingly at full-price, with the result that food gross margins were solidly up and like-for-like sales were strong too: for the key three weeks to January 4, food like-for-like sales were about 4% up. The 1.5% food like-for-like sales growth for the eight weeks to Christmas Eve is less impressive, but still very good compared to the industry overall.

So M&S Food remains a success story for the embattled chief executive, but M&S is not just a food retailer and its performance in general merchandise continues to be a struggle.

In contrast to food, M&S was not able to avoid the promotional battle on the high street before Christmas in clothing, although it has tried to salvage something from its short-sighted decision to go on Sale on Dec 21 by saying that it held its nerve for longer than many of its competitors.

Marc Bolland points to what Gap was doing with discounting pre-Christmas, but Gap ‘lost it’ some years ago and M&S should be capable of rising above them, just as Next was clearly able to maintain its firm stance on full-price retailing before Boxing Day.

Of course, Debenhams has also famously talked about the “sea of red” on the High Street pre-Christmas, as if it didn’t help start the promotional frenzy, and though nobody has dared to point the finger at Arcadia, it is clear that Philip Green was taking no prisoners when it came to clearing surplus stocks ahead of Christmas.

By the end of this year, Marks & Spencer will be able to compete on level terms with Next when it comes to late cut-off times for next day delivery, after the relaunch of its online platform and the completion of its distribution systems overhaul.

Time will tell whether some consumers remember that there is little point in paying full-price for most M&S general merchandise in early December, given their promotional record this Christmas.

Time will also tell whether M&S can stay immune next Christmas from an escalating price war in grocery retailing (and how a late Easter will affect trading this spring), but at least M&S can hold its head up high at the inquest over what went wrong for most Food Retailers this Christmas.

About Nick Bubb

Nick Bubb has been a leading retailing analyst for over 30 years. He is a well-known commentator on UK retailing and is a founder member of the influential KPMG/Ipsos “Retail Think-Tank”.