Marks and spencer

A detailed Summary of Marks and spencer

There are plenty of observers who will claim that Marks & Spencer is dying, and I'm inclined to agree. I'm not suggesting that the retail monolith is going bust, or is about to be bought by Wal-Mart and rolled into one brand with Asda. It's just that the old M&S is dying and a new child is taking its place.Signs that nature has been taking its course have been apparent over the past couple of years. Sir Rick Greenbury rather unwillingly gave up the day-job as chairman, describing the clothing retail sector as a "bloodbath". When the fight for succession as chief executive was won by Peter Salsbury, he immediately had to undertake emergency open-heart surgery to give his patient the chance of leading a full life again. The latest blow came last week when M&S announced it will sever its cosy, 30-year-old supply agreement with its fourth largest supplier, William Baird.M&S first started to buy direct from manufacturers in the Twenties, a rather radical initiative in those days, when wholesalers were taken for granted. Since then, M&S has been a mainstay for the UK rag trade.Sourcing for many retail industries, particularly shoes, has increasingly moved overseas in recent years, to take advantage of the higher margins offered by l

ower labour costs.So it's less surprising that M&S has ditched Baird in favour of foreign imports, than that it has taken so long to do so. M&S is joining the second half of the twentieth century just as its retail rivals are preparing to join the twenty-first.But while the caterpillar is shedding its chrysalis, it's difficult to see a brightly-coloured butterfly emerging - and Salsbury has an enormous job to make it fly.The Greenbury legacy is a heavy one. His power over M&S in the old days was awesome. He had ultimate sign-off on the fashion collections, meaning that teenagers were potentially being styled by their grandfathers' generation. Greenbury would fire off angry letters to newspapers that his press officers would read for the first time in the morning editions.None of this is life-threatening in a business sense and is nothing compared with the achievements of Greenbury in building M&S as a formidable retail force over 40 years. But it is symptomatic of a company that has been held back by autocracy.It was telling that during the boom years of the Eighties, the M&S press office seemed to exist to frustrate any journalists' attempts to reach a director for comment. It is equally symptomatic that M&S has only now hired its first PR staff from outside the company

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Approximate Word count = 861
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Marks and spencer

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