Marks hoped in that in the future there would be "an ample margin of working capital" for management to promote a substantial development program that included the purchase of properties as well as store building, and the hope was fulfilled. Already by approximately four-fifths of the new company's assets consisted of freehold and leasehold properties, and between a year of international depression--and no fewer than new stores were built or rebuilt, all on inner-city sites. On the eve of World War II, Marks placed more emphasis on replacement of old premises by new than on an increase in the number of stores in itself.
Store design had been transformed. Customers were to be attracted into them, to look around even when they did not buy. The business philosophy that Marks and Sieff shared was associated with social change even in years of economic depression. As Marks put it in , "Goods and services once regarded as luxuries have become conventional comforts and are now almost decreed necessities.
A fundamental change in people's habits has been brought about. Millions are enjoying a substantially higher standard of living.
To this substantial rise in the standard of living our company claims to have made a definite contribution. It involves constant alertness and study of the changing habits, desires and tastes of the consumer.
In the latter year there were stores and more than 17, employees. In it was moved to a new building, named Michael House, in the same street. Three years later, there was another move to Baker Street, the present headquarters. Meanwhile, the now-familiar trademark, St Michael, had been applied first in to products sold in Marks and Spencer stores, and its use was extended gradually until Marks referred to it for the first time in a chairman's speech in The Marks and Spencer stores of the interwar years represented a new form of business, challenging the role of older department stores.
Yet such interwar stores were simple and unpretentious when compared with the superstores of the late 20th century that were to be visited by prime ministers and royal families. Indeed, the total cost of a new store in the s was exceeded by the costs of electrical installation in the stores of the s. The prewar stores owed something to American experience, for it was after Marks first visited the United States in that he decided to follow, if not to copy, American developments.
In a price limit of five shillings per item was set and there was a continuing emphasis on value for money, but there was an increasingly wide range of goods on sale. By there were more than 20 departments in the biggest stores, including ladies' and children's drapery; men's and boys' wear; footwear; fancy goods; household linens; gramophone records; confectionery; toiletries; lighting; toys; haberdashery; millinery; china, enamel and aluminum ware; stationery; gifts; and food, recently introduced into a number of stores.
Along with textiles, sales of which increased three times between then and , food was to be a Marks and Spencer staple of the future. Marks was right to emphasize how in relation to textiles, in particular, his business within a changing society was both to respond to consumer tastes and to develop them; in an address to shareholders he stated that "it is the function of the modern distributor to purchase healthier and more attractive clothing. By then Marks and Spencer stores also were selling toiletries of all kinds, travel and holiday ware, and fashion clothes for men as well as women.
Wartime and immediate postwar austerity were bound to influence both consumer tastes and company profits, although even then the company benefited from the standardizing element in the government's Utility Scheme that regulated the design of a range of consumer goods and favored bulk buyers; the scheme remained in operation until and in modified form until The company also was well poised to establish an overseas presence.
It was in that one of the first editions of a new in-house journal, St Michael's News, claimed rightly that by then Marks and Spencer was "news to the general public. Butler, claimed that the country would double its standard of living during the next quarter of a century, and the company was well-positioned to move into the unprecedented consumer boom of the late s and s. It was in , too, that a ten-year progress record became a convenient and impressive feature of the published accounts.
The ten-year progress record for the years from fiscal to fiscal was to be even more striking in terms of sales and profits, although economic conditions during that period were to be far more difficult. By there were 17 overseas stores--the first of them opened in Canada in A Paris store was opened in Also in the early s came the acquisition of three Canadian chains: Walker's clothing stores, which were eventually converted to Marks and Spencer stores; D'Allaird's women's clothing stores; and Peoples general merchandise stores.
It was deeply committed also to another national achievement--supporting British producers whenever it could and encouraging them to develop efficient new lines of business. In the process it established close connections with a number of suppliers, which placed it in a virtually monopsonistic position.
Relationships with the firms from which it was buying were handled as carefully as relationships with customers. Before the main emphasis had been on the price-reducing advantages of bulk buying; during the s and s the focus was on quality control, not least in textiles and in food, then the company's two biggest lines of business.
There was continuity, however, rather than a basic shift. As early as a merchandising committee had been formed to coordinate the work of the various buying departments; a small textiles laboratory had been created in , and a merchandising development department had followed a year later. In a factory organization section, later called the production engineering department, had been opened "to assist manufacturers in the progressive modernization of their plant and to adapt themselves to the latest technical advances," and two years later a food development department was created.
Chawla, 45, who was the chief operating officer of Walmart India in his last role, will take charge next month, two senior industry executives said. His main responsibilities will be to expedite breakeven of Spencer. Subscribe to ETPrime. Read before you invest. Insights on Spencer's Retail Ltd. Explore Now. Browse Companies:. Find this comment offensive? This will alert our moderators to take action Name Reason for reporting: Foul language Slanderous Inciting hatred against a certain community Others.
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