M&S shocks city by selling more clothes

The retailer's headline numbers aren't quite as good as they look, but they're still very creditable. Just as boss Steve Rowe is shutting stores

M&S chief executive Steve Rowe has been focusing his energies on the food business (Paul Rogers)

It’s a City shocker! M&S is selling more clothes again!

The retailer threatened to become the super part of retail’s super Thursday (when half the high street released their Christmas figures) with a 2.3 per cent rise in clothing and home sales at stores open at least a year. And a 3.1 per cent rise including new space.

That isn’t quite as good as it looks. Just under half of that second figure was down to the calendar, which made for extra shopping days this year when compared to last year.

But even if you take that off the top, clothes sales still rose handily.

M&S more commonly reports numbers going in the opposite direction, so this feels rather odd, even uncomfortable. It's sort of like an England football team not disappointing at a major tournament. Or a world class cyclist without a therapeutic-use exemption for some drug.

“Better ranges, better availability, and better prices helped to improve our performance in a difficult marketplace,” crowed the recently appointed chief executive Steve Rowe.

David Potts, the boss of Morrisons, which also surprised on the upside earlier this week, put it even more simply: “We stocked more of what our customers wanted to buy.”

M&S hasn’t done that for what seems like ages. So long that a certain Steve Rowe decided he was going to close a load of traditional M&S shops, thus de-emphasising the clothing business, in favour of focusing on M&S Food. The latter has been the bit of the business that has often bailed his predecessors out at this time of year.

How did it do? Less well than they might have hoped. Mr Rowe pointed out that it’s still growing its market share, with a 5.6 per cent sales rise. But that’s largely down to new shops opening. Shops open at least a year turned in a sluggish 0.6 per cent sales rise. Retail analyst Nick Bubb pointed out that food sales would have risen by just 0.3 per cent were the calendar to have been the same as last year.

In other words, just a matter of weeks after Mr Rowe shifted the company’s strategy, the bit of the business he’s decided to cull is doing well. And the bit of the business he has decided to put his energies into is treading water.

Of course, this is just one trading statement, and the clothing business has been poor for a long time. There was inevitably going to come a point when it perked up a bit. It should also be remembered that it has flattered to deceive before.

Still, as Mr Rowe said, if you stock your shelves with better ranges, with better availability and better prices, well, shoppers will follow. As I wrote about Morrisons, retail isn’t a particularly complicated business.

Fortunately for Mr Rowe, he’s a CEO. If the clothing business continues to pick up after his store closures he’ll still be hailed as a genius by his boardroom colleagues. And if it doesn’t, well it just proves his strategy was right all along. What about if the food business struggles? Ah, well, you see it’s tough out there. Tesco and Morrisons are reviving, but we’re throwing up stores and growing market share that way.

Life’s good if you’re the boss.