Marks & Spencer is reshuffling its leadership team with three new appointments in an effort to “transform” its fashion and beauty business. Considering its current success, this has left many wondering why. TheIndustry.beauty hears reactions from industry experts.
Last week, Marks & Spencer announced the appointment of a new Managing Director of Clothing, Home & Beauty, as well as a new Director of M&S Woman and Director of Home & Beauty, in an effort to “transform” the business.
Ex-Boohoo CEO John Lyttle will be joining as Managing Director of Clothing, Home & Beauty in a planned succession, replacing Richard Price. He brings retail and transformation experience, having spent five years as Chief Executive at Boohoo and nine years as COO at Primark.
Maddy Evans, currently Director of Womenswear, is trying the Director of M&S Woman role on for size, while David Brittain will take over from Heidi Woodhouse, Director of Home & Beauty, at the end of April. Brittain is currently the Business Development Director at Amazon Fashion in Europe.
The shakeup is a head-scratcher for some: why attempt to “transform” a business whose Christmas sales topped £4.06 billion and whose pre-tax profits were up 17% year-on-year to £408 million in its half-year results?
“‘Transform’ is the wrong word,” says Richard Hyman, a retail analyst with over 40 years experience with the British retailer. “The real transformation has already happened. Marks & Spencer stemmed its decline in market share and reversed it, which is a hell of an achievement in a market that has been continuously shrinking.”
In 2018, Chairman Archie Norman said M&S was “on a burning platform”. CEO Stuart Machin was hired in 2022 to begin the retailer’s turnaround plan.
“Turnaround is the most overused word in the business,” says Hyman. “There are very few turnarounds. You can tart up the shop window and make it look better in the short term, but true turnarounds are unusual for major brand like Marks & Spencer.”
Hyman puts anything resembling a turnaround down to Price. “Very few people have magic wands,” he continues. “It’s about detailed hard work and doing things bit by bit.”
At this point, Hyman believes that the desired “transformation” has already happened and that what the heritage retail chain must do now is build on this.
“It’s easy to forget that Price took on a has-been. Building a fantastic, world-class brand takes years and years and losing that cache takes very little time at all.”
Industry commentator Marcus Jaye agrees. “Marks & Spencer was in the wilderness for 20 years before Norman and Machin,” he says. “It’s all about leadership. John Lewis is thriving under [CEO] Peter Ruis.” Ruis was tasked with turning around a wheezing John Lewis, appointed Executive Director in January 2024, replacing Dame Sharon White.
Jaye makes the point that an executive shakeup during a period of success is unusual, but considers that Lyttle’s roles at Primark and Boohoo make him a good fit for the position, having worked at brands with such high volumes of stock.
“I think John Lyttle is a good choice to take over from Richard Price, given his COO experience at Primark,” says Nick Bubb, retail analyst and author of The Daily Retailer newsletter. “[Lyttle’s] time at Boohoo was a wild ride, starting early in 2019 just before the online lockdown boom of 2020 and then the Arcadia/Debenhams acquisitions of 2021.
“I think he did a good job overall, however, in dealing with both the business and acquisition issues, and with the Kamani family [minority owners of the Boohoo Group]. Clearly the online slump post-lockdown wasn’t his fault and it’s hard to separate that from the growing impact on Boohoo of the competition from Shein.” When Lyttle stepped down from his post at Boohoo in October, shares in the group dropped 7%, amid already widening losses.
Despite this, Hyman describes John Lyttle as a “great appointment”, adding that he did a “terrific job at Primark”. He also believes that Price’s parting ways with the brand would have been his own decision.
“[Marks & Spencer] has taken the opportunity to move things around a little,” he says. “They’ve said to themselves, ‘We’ve managed to rescue the business with this team, and now we need to build on it’.”
Bubb adds that Marks & Spencer, outside of its food department, “is a much improved business”. He attributes the executive movement to Machin’s “relentlessness”: “[He] says there is always more to do, such as with the online operation and the distribution network. Therefore, the people changes may well help, although ultimately it will all depend on whether Marks & Spencer customers continue to react well to the new fashion ranges and the new brands and merchandising changes that they see in store.”
As for the role of Director of M&S Woman, this is particularly important, as Jaye explains. “Women have the spending power,” he says. “If you can get the woman on board, that’s the way in to menswear, home, everything.”
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