Member Info for fatsuperman

The average M&S customer are not pensioners, they are middle age, middle class. Which is the sweet spot of volume and value - we shouldn't be ashamed of that. Massive potential with M&S.

Bick, the JV is simply taking time because there is a lot at stake. Anyone who has been involved in this sort of thing takes time, especially when things are not 100% certain - which is often the case with mining / oil & gas.

I entirely agree with you on the fire sale comments. The value of over a billion barrels is a significant amount more than our current market cap + debt.

Equally Pang, maybe more investors could do with walking around the companies they invest in and seeing with their own eyes how things are doing? Many investors here use all the information they possibly can to aid their decision making, but the reality is that we're outside the loop, so only ever have scant data to base decisions from. I think it's very good sense to actually go and have a look.

Yes, it's a poor data point, but if the stores were quiet during Christmas, then I'd definitely be a bit nervous :)

Merry Christmas to you too

JG, thanks for the update. I was in my local M&S a week ago and the clothing departments were completely packed. Menswear was incredible, huge good-natured queues, all the warm weather gear going amazingly well. Was back today and obviously much quieter in clothing, but the food hall was insane. I agree, bodes very well.

How was Stevenage? Does it look good?

Neil & Chilting - I do agree that technically, M&S could use the fleet (Gist or M&S) to move orders from the two M&S.com warehouses to the Ocado CFCs. To get the orders picked and onto outbound trailers would be simple enough. Unloading and re-picking in Ocado to then combine with outbound food orders. But the point I'm making is that is unlikely to be cheaper than using the carrier network as they do today. And the orchestration of getting that timing right, and not clogging up Ocado or delaying orders is much harder than it sounds. It's hard enough getting everything working within one site, without marshalling and merging orders from multiple sites. I know to us it seems like a no brainer. The proof will be that they never do it.

I think the first step here is surely to leverage the GIST acquisition to benefit M&S. There is a big fleet, lots of drivers, a load of well-located warehouses. Very interesting times ahead for that very good strategic move.

JimJam - Ocado have sold M&S clothing lines since very early on in the venture. Granted, it's only 700-800 lines, but there are options there. Ocado's could expand the range offered, although I doubt they could do hanging product.

On the MKS / OCDO front, I'm simply saying you can't route M&S.com clothing orders from Donington through Ocado warehouses unless you want it to take longer than it does today.

Hey Chilting.
Ocado uses a regional distribution model (like all grocery companies). M&S fulfill all customer orders from Donington (huge) or Bradford (new, small volume).

Look at where the Ocado CFCs are located. It isn’t at all practical to take a van from the Ocado South East London fulfilment centre into the midlands to pick up a pair of slippers and a coat for a customer in Ealing, and then drive back to deliver the food and clothing.

Equally, you wouldn’t send an M&S courier with the clothing on it to the Ocado warehouse to pick up a bunch of groceries - they don’t have the facilities in their fleet.

The idea doesn’t work economically. It will cost much, much more per journey, it would only work for a tiny fraction of situations, customer proposition would be worsened and it would cost a bomb to enable in the first place.

For me, MKS need to be leveraging the benefits unlocked through the GIST acquisition. That is game-changing. :)

That wasn't just directed at you Chilting, so apols if it comes across passive aggressive! Just some general observations on the possible strategy of sharing transport.

Consolidating orders from an Ocado grocery warehouse and an M&S clothing warehouse(s)/store is just not realistic. Even if the sites are next door to each other, orchestrating the orders arriving at the right point, at the same time, is just not worth the effort. Think for a moment about the scale of the operation where 2 million orders are coming out of the main C&H warehouse each week. Synchronising your M&S order with an order on a totally different, unconnect system in another company is incredibly challenging. And to what end? It'll never be worth the money ever if the sites were next to each other and the customers ordered at identical times.

Some products couldn't be transported in the OCDO vehicles, so you'd also need all that logic and requisite data to confirm what could and couldn't go.

Anyway, enough ranting from me :)

Hey Chilting, my deliveries from M&S seem to come from various couriers, so they definitely utilise the network other than Royal Mail. They will surely have been well prepared for this strike, with the real issue being the pressure on the other couriers from everyone wanting their services at once, at a peak time.

I think people constantly simplify the challenges here. Ocado Retail is treated a separate company. And the scale of the transport network needed is quite different. Ocado do something like 400k orders per week. M&S do over 2m just from one warehouse. That's before you consider the stuff fulfilled from stores. The expectation that Ocado have capacity for thousands of extra journey's is ridiculous. Why would they be able to satisfy that demand? What you are actually talking about is merging the transportation of two separate businesses, and somehow you think that is easier than just scaling the part that needs to scale.

If M&S need to change their direct to consumer parcel delivery strategy, they need to do that in a holistic manner. But as a shareholder, I would rather they focus their energies on efficiencies elsewhere in the supply chain. And carry on the great work they are doing on product style.

Strobe, I'm a Brighton fan! :)

PANG, that is absolutely the opposite thing you will see in M&S. They are the market leader in knitwear, thermal etc. They NEED cold weather in winter to do well. So when it's cold, M&S sales will soar.

Keep an eye out for indicators they are doing well, like the website slowing down due to customer volume. Final Christmas order dates being brought forward, massive queues in store at tills and click and collect counters. I went in twice last week for some bits and it was absolutely packed both days. Every single till staffed and long queues of pleased looking shoppers - product looked incredible and I found everything I needed in the right sizes on both visits. Which did not used to be my experience there. So I think it all bodes well for a very good M&S Christmas.

Didn't seem to be tons of promotions etc either!

Can anyone confirm if the administrators are related to the firm that were running the turnaround plan with Next and Tom Joules?

Am I right in saying that the administrator were the same firm working with Next, Joules and Tom Joules on the turnaround plan before Joules went into admin? And then the very same group buy Joules out of administration. I think the people furious here should be the JOUL shareholders!

My sister worked in retail for Next, and they were horrendous. Awful pay, expected to be in store 30 minutes before your shift started or you got in trouble, and so on. Note that all of this could be local to the store, so probably not worth me pressing the post button! :)

I actually like that JL advert a lot more than their recent ones, and clearly hits home with people that have been through the care system. They spent an absolute fortune on it though, filmed over 12 days I believe. Which is 2-3 times the time (assume cost) spent by M&S C&H.

If you are thinking short term, then you have a point. But you are thinking about it from a short term investor, M&S are thinking about things as part of the infinite game of business. Long-term, MKS absolutely needed to create a mechanism to get M&S food products direct to customers in their homes. Ocado retail is a strategic investment and a very sensible move. Medium to long term it is absolutely the right move.

Customer patterns have flipped back to pre-COVID numbers, capacity was increased and costs have gone through the roof. Look at last year comparisons, Ocado was already profit-making. New leadership are confident and bullish, I wouldn't leap so soon on writing off Ocado

casapinos, when you say less clothing and home I assume you mean less space allocated to it. And not less sales. Clothing and home is the profit engine of M&S and there are huge opportunities to grow market share in the UK and globally.

MORE clothing and home is the goal, not less.

The product is being recognised as having great style credentials and crucially great value for money. The product is in a good place, now it’s all the other elements mentioned at the investor presentation

OWLS, it doesn't matter if people followed his or others advice, both sides of that were given in the economic environment at the time. Neither viewpoint was considering the poorly thought-out disastrous handling of the economy and mini-budget by the current government.

Ignoring wider market / economic backdrop and talking about M&S fundamentals, that poster was just making it all up and going on emotion. They are owed no apology.

Eoin Tonge leaving because he didn't win the CEO position, which was what he of course wanted once Steve Rowe was leaving. So he's moved on to somewhere he sees a shorter path to that seat. A shame for M&S, but is entirely about his career and not the prospects of MKS.

I should point out that Pilbara (157mt at 1.2%) are valued at £3.7bn, currently producing so a long way to go, but gives some indication