Food glorious food, but would you buy your clothes there? (Marks & Spencer)

Member Name: Zahooga

Product:	Marks & Spencer
Date:	16/06/00 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They are everywhere, great food, and good for the basics

Disadvantages: Clothing style has been a bit "off message"

M & S - a venerable institution on the British high street. Marks and Sparks was one of the wonder stories of British commerce, from its roots as a market stall, to the dominant high street chain in the 1980's and early 1990's. Alas the management thought they could do no wrong, and Marks simply lost its spark...

Or did it? I personally think that M & S's food range is very hard to beat - no matter how hard Tesco and Sainsbury's might try, they are always one step behind St Michael and his merry band. With a core range of quality ready meals, which are reasonably priced and save sooooo much hassle, why cook???

As for clothing, their suits (reputedly made by Armani's factory) are great value, and whilst they may not be the cutting edge of tailoring (apologies for the pun) they do retail the timeless classics.

Casual clothing however is a totally different ball game. In New Labour parlance, M & S were simply "off-message". Net result - fire the boss, cut the dividends and lose shoppers. Not good. However all would appear to be being redeemed - whilst the stores are on the whole still quite beige in effect, the new trendy autograph range aims to be Next, Jigsaw and DKNY all rolled into one. And the fashion press seem to like it, so there must be something in it.

So M & S's is having a rough patch, but as one newspaper points out, a shop which supplies 43% of womens underwear in the UK can't be doing all that badly!

Summary: