With the current economic downturn, coupled with consumers cutting costs, Marks and Spencer has announced today that its sales were down for the fourth consecutive quarter and that the outlook remains unsteady.
Marks and Spencer’s announced the latest figures, which do not take into account store openings and closures, shows a 4.2% fall in like-for-like sales in the UK for the first 13 weeks of the year. Sir Stuart Rose, M&S’s executive chairman said that he believed the company was undertaking, “the right things for our customers”.
The latest figures come after Marks and Spencer’s announced in January, that it would be closing 25 of its Simply Food outlets and two of its regular stores, with 1,200 job losses.
The fall in sales was not as much as previously expected, and better than the 7.1% fall in the fourth quarter of 2008. Food sales were down 3.7%, with general merchandise seeing a 4.2% fall, but overall sales were 1.9% up, with a significant increase in international and online sales.
2 Responses
That will be some more smaller shops closing then. I wonder when the big shops will start going
Posted on April 3rd, 2009 at 6:14 am
our local shop has just close and its probably only been around 2/3 years. bit of a shame as most of the nicer food products you could get in there without having to travel to our next nearest store which is 30 minutes away.
Posted on April 7th, 2009 at 9:22 am
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