Marks & Spencer to open 20 ‘bigger and better’ stores by April 2024

M&S is to open 20 “bigger and better” stores in its next financial year in an acceleration of its estate rotation programme.

Eight will be full-line stores selling M&S’s complete clothing, home and food ranges. The other 12 will be M&S Foodhalls.

Five of the eight full-line sites will be relocations of existing stores, with M&S taking shopping centre units formerly occupied by Debenhams in Leeds White Rose, Liverpool One, Birmingham Bullring, Manchester Trafford Centre and Lakeside Thurrock.

Another of the full-line stores will be a brand-new branch in Purley Way, south London.

M&S has not announced details of the remaining two planned full-line stores.

Locations of the 12 new Foodhalls are to include Stockport in Greater Manchester, Barnsley in South Yorkshire and Largs in North Ayrshire.

All the planned stores are set to open in M&S’s 2023/24 financial year, which runs from April to April.

M&S is also closing 67 underperforming full-line stores in high streets and opening 104 Simply Food branches, in plans announced previously.

It aims to have 180 full-line branches by April 2026, down from about 247, and grow the number of Simply Food sites from about 316 to 420.

The retailer said today its latest plans brought new store investment to £480m and would create over 3,400 jobs.

M&S CEO Stuart Machin said the performance of recently relocated stores had given the business “the confidence to go faster” in its estate rotation plan.

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M&S said a recent store relocation in Chesterfield, from an “ageing town centre site” to a 46,000 sq ft unit in Ravenside Retail Park, resulted in sales growing by 103% year on year in December.

It said the store rotation programme was underpinned by investment in digital services, including the rollout of click & collect to130 stores across the UK, and Scan & Shop, which 33,000 customers a week use to scan shopping with their phones.

“Stores are a core part of M&S’s omnichannel future and serve as a competitive advantage for how customers want to shop today,” said Machin.

“Our store rotation programme is about making sure we have the right stores, in the right place, with the right space, and we’re aiming to rotate from the 247 stores we have today to 180 higher-quality, higher-productivity full-line stores that sell our full clothing, home and food offer whilst also opening over 100 bigger, better food sites.

“Our investment in stores not only delivers a better experience for customers and colleagues, it boosts local communities with new job creation and will help us deliver a more sustainable estate in every sense.”

As well as investing in owned stores, M&S plans to expand its convenience offer by extending its franchise mode. It will mean building on its partnerships with BP, Moto, SSP and Costa.