In 2015, with e-commerce sales still in a sharp growth phase in the UK, Marks and Spencer reported that its online sales were 2% down on 2014. While John Lewis had pushed online to 33.3% of its business by 2015, M&S had to make do with 15%. That figure matches the John Lewis position in 2010, so M&S is 5 years behind. For a business with as many strategic problems as M&S, getting online wrong is a disaster.
Twenty years ago M&S was king of the UK high street. Every shopping centre property developer’s number one priority was to secure agreement that M&S would be there. M&S could push for bargain rents because the developers were desperate for a signed contract. Once you could tell other retailers ‘M&S is signed up’, renting out the rest of the shop space was no problem.
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