Marks & Spencer news

M&S has announced significant changes within its executive team in a push to drive greater accountability and responsibility across strategic areas. The move comes ahead of M&S's Q1 trading update on July 8th. One view for the customer Executive director of multichannel, Laura Wade-Gery, adds UK retail to her remit with retail director, Sacha Berendji, reporting into her. This move is designed ...

Launched in January 2007, Plan A has been recently refreshed to Plan A 2020 which consists of 100 new, revised and existing commitments. A more sustainable business Plan A 2020 is a new step M&S is taking to become a more sustainable business. In order to deliver sector-wide change that it aspires to, M&S aims to participate on a broader scale by leading with others. Plan A gives M&S a ...

M&S is set to launch an in-store campaign to highlight the quality of its Simply M&S range. Simply range price-match to Sainsbury's In a move which follows the retailer's full-year results last week, M&S has revealed its plans to focus on highlighting the quality of its Simply M&S range. Launched in 2012 and 11% of total food sales, the range is currently price-matched to Sainsbury's priv...

M&S has reported solid group sales for the year to 29th March 2014 with encouraging progress in food and multichannel offsetting declining LFL GM sales. Operating profit fell, impacted by a weaker gross margin on GM. Headline numbers Group sales: +2.7% to £10.3bn Total UK sales: +2.3% (LFL +0.2%) UK Food sales: +4.2% (LFL +1.7%) UK GM sales: 0.0% (LFL -1.4%) International...

Marks & Spencer (M&S) is making a new push to expand online in China, hoping fast-growing ecommerce will give the UK-based multi-national retailer more opportunities to succeed in the market. Expanding M&S's online reach in China The new wine shop (marksandspencer.jd.com) enables M&S to sell its products to wine lovers in most provinces in China, and will complement its other two official web...

Following a recent trip to a land of 'unorganised retail', Laura May looks at how the Indian grocery landscape is evolving as international retail players enter the market. A stark contrast to grocery retailing as some may know it, India's millions of market stalls and specialist shops, kiranas and kiosks - collectively known as 'unorganised retail' - account for around 98% of the country's gr...

Marks & Spencer clarified it does not have a plan to close its stores in Shanghai and instead, plans to open first stores in Beijing and Guangzhou. Reaffirms commitment to China M&S opened its first store in Shanghai six years ago. It currently operates 15 stores in China with seven in Shanghai, two in Changzhou and one in Ningbo, Wuhan, Qingdao, Jiangyin, Wenzhou and Suzhou. The annou...

Latest figures from Nielsen's Scantrack EPoS tracking service for the UK grocery sector shows that, in the four weeks to 29 March, sector sales fell by 4.3%, with volumes falling slightly faster on -4.8%.  The steepness of the decline owes much to the specific seasonal effects of the timing of Easter in April this year, whereas the holiday fell at the end of March in 2013.  Meantime sales within s...

The biggest grocery retailers are experiencing challenging market conditions. Price competition is fierce, discounters are growing, and the way people shop is changing. Is grocery missing out on economic recovery and, if so, why? What will it take to kick-start a recovery? James Walton investigates. Good news Economic recovery in the UK continues to gain momentum; output is rising, inflatio...

Announcing its latest performance update for the 13 weeks to 29 March 2014, Marks & Spencer has revealed group sales up 1.9%.  The company is now looking to international expansion as a significant source of future growth, but within the core UK business sales were up 1.5%, while like-for-like growth was marginally negative on -0.2%. 'Improving' general merchandise driven by clothing Sale...