The Guardian view on the decline of Marks & Spencer: trouble at tills

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/03/the-guardian-view-on-the-decline-of-marks-spencer-trouble-at-tills

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Shops need shoppers, and if people want them to survive as bricks-and-mortar entities in the face of ferocious online competition, they will have to shop in them. So far so obvious, you might think. But the widely anticipated ejection from the FTSE 100 of the UK’s biggest clothes retailer, Marks & Spencer, makes it worth spelling out. If M&S – which still commands an almost 30% share of the UK’s underwear market and is the UK’s biggest jeans retailer – drops out of the premier league of British companies on Wednesday as expected, it will be for the first time since the index’s launch in 1984.

The retailer is far from unique in having difficulties. The combination of Brexit fears and the knock-on effects of a falling property market, with competition from online and discount retailers, has made trading conditions extremely tough. BHS went bust, and House of Fraser had to be rescued. Sainsbury’s and Morrisons supermarkets, and Kingfisher (owner of B&Q) hover just a few places higher than M&S in the FTSE 100. The department store chain Debenhams is fighting for survival following a court challenge by Mike Ashley to its recently announced plan to restructure.

But because M&S stores occupy focal points in many town centres and high streets – the recently closed store in Hull, for example, had been there since the 19th century – its decline has particular significance. Shop closures are felt by many people, particular older ones who have grown up with M&S as a household name, to be a symptom of a more general deterioration.

How more astute or courageous managers might have gone about making this emotional baggage work in the company’s favour over the past two decades is not an easy question to answer. General merchandisers have struggled more than other retailers in the face of online competition. M&S’s long history brings specific challenges. But there is no doubt that there have been clumsy missteps and about-turns, not least in the all-important area of women’s clothing, which, despite some encouraging noises around this autumn’s collections, it seems no closer to cracking. Jill McDonald, its most recent head of fashion, was fired in July after less than two years. The website is notably lacking in style, while the clothing side of the business as a whole still struggles to present a coherent sense of purpose.

As with bookshops, which were among the first retailers to face the Amazon effect of customers deserting them in favour of lower prices and home delivery, it is clear that sometimes people prefer the idea of a shop to the real thing. No one apart from their direct rivals wants iconic stores to close. But customers’ feelings about a brand, while undoubtedly worth something (since shoppers of all sorts develop preferences and loyalties), do not on their own drive sales – or not in sufficient volume to keep a giant like M&S alive.

The next year will be crucial, with the launch of online M&S food shopping in a link-up with Ocado. How the rest of the business will reorganise itself is less clear. Growing awareness of the costs of fast fashion ought to work in favour of companies that emphasise social and environmental responsibility. But while price isn’t everything, in straitened times it counts for an awful lot.