Marks and Spencer has reported a 0.3 per cent rise in underlying United Kingdom sales for the latest quarter, as strong food sales offset a fall in clothing sales, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday
UK like-for-like sales rose 1.8 per cent at its food business, but general merchandise — which includes clothing, footwear and homewares — fell 1.6 per cent.
It is the eighth consecutive quarter of falling sales for general merchandise.
However, chief executive Marc Bolland said general merchandise had shown “some improvement this quarter”.
He has recently revamped the clothing division to try to boost flagging sales.
M&S shares were down two per cent in morning trading, and were the biggest fallers on the main FTSE 100 share index.
Last year, M&S changed its retail team, bringing in Belinda Earl, a former chief executive of both Debenhams and Jaeger, as head of style. In May, the company unveiled a new clothing collection and strategy
Analysts say a lot depends on this year’s autumn and winter collection, which goes on sale later this month and has received good reviews from the fashion press.
“Clothing is the bedrock of the business, particularly womenswear,” Bryan Roberts, retail analyst at Kantar retail told the BBC’s Today programme. “Without it, the business will struggle.
“It’s one thing to impress fashion journalists and City types, but another thing to impress young families and grandparents, the broader audience that M&S is trying to appeal to.
“If it comes to Christmas and clothing still hasn’t recovered, the knives might come out for Mr Bolland.”
However, Neil Saunders from the retail consultancy Conlumino suggested it was not the actual clothes that were the problem, it was the layout of the stores.
“The big issue for M&S is… within the store environment, collections lose their creative integrity and become subsumed by a sea of merchandise,” he said.