Volatile Christmas trading leaves more of a mess at retailer M&S

Last year was grim for retailers, while M&S, the clothing sector’s chronic underperformer, struggled at Christmas too. Matthew Partridge reports.

Marks & Spencer
(Image credit: © Michael McNerney/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Last year was a horror story on the high street. The British Retail Consortium says retail sales suffered their “biggest decline in 25 years” in 2020, says Richard Parrington in The Guardian. While total sales only fell by 0.3%, in itself “the worst performance since records began in 1995”, this masks a “dramatic collapse” in some sectors. Sales of food bought from shops increased, owing to the closure of restaurants and pubs, but “sales of all other products fell 5% from a year earlier”. Sales of non-food items in shops, as opposed to online, collapsed by 24%.

One retailer that has done particularly badly is Marks & Spencer, says Ashley Armstrong in The Times. Not only did the company announce its “first loss in its 94-year history” last November, but it has now said that “volatile trading” over the festive season has led to total clothing sales falling by 25.1% to £787 million over the 13 weeks to Boxing Day. Even strong online sales growth of 47.5%, helped by an improved presence on social media and the ability to ship trapped products in closed shops, failed to compensate for a 46.5% fall in in-store clothing sales.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri