Along with this week’s re-structuring announcement of 7,000 jobs losses across the business over the next three months, M&S says its Clothing & Home sales are ‘significantly down but improving.’ Total revenue for the retailer’s non-food portfolio was down 38.5% in the last 13 weeks. However, online Clothing & Home sales have ‘performed strongly since the start of the year with an additional 1.9m new customers.’
The retailer states that in the eight weeks since store re-opening total sales for Clothing & Home have been down 29.9% (up to August 8) with ‘trends steadily improving’. In those 8 weeks, store sales were down 47.9% while online continued to perform strongly up 39.2% on last year. In these last eight weeks, online sales represented 41% of M&S’s total Clothing & Home sales.”
M&S reveals that some of its newer out of town stores have been trading close to last year’s level of sales overall in recent weeks. However, older town centre stores and some shopping centres have been ‘heavily impacted by social distancing and reduced footfall.’ The shift in consumer demand to home deliveries rather than store collection is also influencing retail margins.
Chief executive Steve Rowe states that M&S’ proposed streamlining of store operations and management structures “are an important step in becoming a leaner, faster business set up to serve changing customer needs.”
Top: Some of M&S’ newer out of town stores have been trading close to last year’s sales. M&S’ Nottingham-Giltbrook store is pictured.
