Marks is no Primark – nor should it be

A day after Rose was elected as executive chairman of M&S – battered and bruised, but not down and out – and a week after he blamed the torrid market for a profit warning, Primark revealed that it has fallen a few rungs from its ivory tower.

The seemingly untouchable Primark said today that its like-for-like growth spluttered to a halt in the second half of the year as consumers put the brakes on spending and poor weather in April hampered sales.

Following Primark’s announcement, Seymour Pierce analyst Freddie George said that “the era of throwaway fashion appears to be coming to an end and maybe the consumer is now buying less, but trading up”.

But has another mighty retailer really fallen? The Brits do enjoy a touch of Schadenfreude – and many mere retail mortals will no doubt find solace in the fact that Primark is affected by the same concerns as them – but the Primark juggernaut is still chugging along, albeit in a slightly different direction.

Primark is set to blaze a trail across Europe faster than a German dashing for his sunlounger and has set its sights on Germany, Holland and Portugal, while opening a few stores in Spain along the way.

With the strengthening of its management team, after hiring C&A executive Guy Young as international trading director and appointing former New Look chief operating officer Paul Marchant to the same role, Primark is primed for its European assault.

And there are many retailers that would give their eye-teeth to report flat like-for-like sales in the present climate. At yesterday’s M&S AGM, Rose looked like he would have given his knighthood to have not had to explain M&S’s 5.3 per cent like-for-like slump to shareholders.

Rose faces a dilemma of Primark-sized proportions, with Primark-like overtones – whether to keep M&S’s clothing offer in its Middle England comfort zone, in other words, comfortably upmarket – or whether to go deeper down the value route that is dominated by Primark.

He should probably listen to George’s earlier supposition and leave Primark to cope with the end of its era and concentrate on producing the quality and breadth of offer it should be renowned for. A case in point was a vocal M&S shareholder yesterday: Teresa Vanneck-Surplice, who famously snubbed M&S’s clothing by turning up at last year’s AGM dressed in Primark, described M&S’s present collection as “marvellous”.

Rose must have sighed with relief at the rosy verdict on his chairmanship, but will need to win over many more if he is to put the spark back in to Marks.