Anyone at M&S?

[tomtomagain]

that ain't going to happen.

why would we want UK tax payers?

Why indeed?

Anyway the fact that they have almost completely outsourced their IT isn't the cause of their problems.

The cause of the problems is that they actually don't have anything in "General Merchandising" worth buying.

I wanted to buy a couple of lamps the other day. I looked at M&S. The range was atrocious, they had almost nothing. So I got them from John Lewis instead.


The only thing I'd buy from them is a nice sandwich, the clothes and range of other products is years behind other retailers.

What are they trying to be? A value shop? Or a quality shop? 'cos at the moment they are neither.

[Unix]

Why indeed?

Anyway the fact that they have almost completely outsourced their IT isn't the cause of their problems.

The cause of the problems is that they actually don't have anything in "General Merchandising" worth buying.

I wanted to buy a couple of lamps the other day. I looked at M&S. The range was atrocious, they had almost nothing. So I got them from John Lewis instead.


The only thing I'd buy from them is a nice sandwich, the clothes and range of other products is years behind other retailers.

What are they trying to be? A value shop? Or a quality shop? 'cos at the moment they are neither.

I agree, John Lewis/Waitrose should acquire/merge with M&S and rebrand M&S to Waitrose for all their local food M&S places and John Lewis for their dept stores.

[vetran]

Why indeed?

Anyway the fact that they have almost completely outsourced their IT isn't the cause of their problems.

The cause of the problems is that they actually don't have anything in "General Merchandising" worth buying.

I wanted to buy a couple of lamps the other day. I looked at M&S. The range was atrocious, they had almost nothing. So I got them from John Lewis instead.


The only thing I'd buy from them is a nice sandwich, the clothes and range of other products is years behind other retailers.

What are they trying to be? A value shop? Or a quality shop? 'cos at the moment they are neither.

+1 and with Primark & the supermarkets upping their game its getting even more interesting.

M&S should be going high end like they can't compete at the bottom end but their kit is now poor quality and as you say old.

They can always start a few outlet stores if they want to try the value arena.

[tomtomagain]

Anyway the fact that they have almost completely outsourced their IT isn't the cause of their problems.

Well I say that isn't the problem but ...... you outsource all your technical guys ( IT and non-IT ), contract out your design, shut down your UK manufacturing, only employee minimum wage-staff in your shops and try and manage everything through 3rd party contracts.

And one day you wake up and the business isn't working. But there's no smart people left to tell you why and the people that are left either don't have the motivation or influence any more to fix it.

[eek]

+1 and with Primark & the supermarkets upping their game its getting even more interesting.

M&S should be going high end like they can't compete at the bottom end but their kit is now poor quality and as you say old.

They can always start a few outlet stores if they want to try the value arena.

+1 needed to buy a couple of pairs of work trousers weekend before last.

The Marks quality is worse than primark. I ended up in House of Fraser and Next as they really were the only decent options.