M&S + John Lewis - your poor Christmas sales will be due to the contempt you've shown your female customers

I rather like how snowblight and Tocopherol are keeping this post going

Thank you RedToothBrush. I’ve had a read up on them. There are actually three near me.

Is that mint icing, Totally?

It has a beautifully subtle taste and the cake is mint chocolate. Oh gad! It serves 8-12 people, but I ate so much of it, with vegan vanilla ice cream. Sorry, I forgot to mention it’s a vegan baker. She’s awesome.

Timpsons fix your shoes and also do a lot of retraining of 'undesirables'.

So environmentally more friendly than fashion and socially responsible in giving life opportunities to ex-offenders.

Practical rather than virtue signalling.

Is that mint icing, Totally?

Timpsons are a really nice company. They do shoe repairs, key cutting, engraving and that sort of stuff. Their employees , without exception, are so helpful and polite.

10% of their employees are ex- offenders and they have an excellent retention/ non re-offending rate.

"Maybe they’ll change their stance in a year or 5 but will I want to come back when I’ve already changed my shopping habits?"
And there's the rub. M&S have thrown away the loyalty and goodwill of core customers. I don't think they will win it back, because - we'll have new shopping habits. New loyalties. New default shops.

WhatsInAName19 listed some of the challenges facing retail (Brexit, election, Black Friday etc.), all chipping away at sales and profits. All these factors are external to the company and outwith their control. But company policy over changing rooms is very much within their control, so any loss of sales due to this one factor was avoidable. Pissing off your core customers before you have attracted new customers was avoidable too. These are pretty fundamental errors of judgement by M&S's senior management, so if the business suffers, it's down to their own poor performance.

Also, my cousin is an M&S store manager. She regularly passes on surplus food to my parents because she's got a holiday home close to where they live, & gets great perks in terms of taking away short dated stock.

She's fully aware of the issues with men in the women's changing rooms, & thinks it's a ghastly perv charter.

She also, when I told her I was boycotting, said that a) she didn't blame me in the slightest & b) there was lots of discussion at area manager level. She said 'they're shitting their pants over this one, it's all anyone's really talking about'.

I've known my cousin for 50 years. She loves her job with M&S. She's worked there since she was a teenager herself. I absolutely believe her.

Who are Timpsons? I assume they’re a uk company.

Good grief - the efforts to blame women for this. Why are women suddenly responsible for putting the business in peril (according to a couple of posters)? It's M & S management who made a crap decision to remove sex segregated changing rooms.

It's their Ratner moment. They're a business and their job is to keep customers happy and they've failed. Why would any woman choose to spend their hard earned cash with M & S when it treats women with contempt? They've created the problem, they need to sort it.

Oh well ive spent 1k+ with them. Very happy with them actually.

Lang I just looked up Timpsons, fascinating!

That’s one tasty looking cake

I’ve absolutely no doubt that cake made by a female would taste very bitter to some. 😁

"If you don't spend your money at virtue-signalling corporate capitalist stores draining the life out of town high streets in favour of inaccessible bourgeois out of town malls, but instead seek out local businesses, especially female-led ones, you're harming working class women."

Not the most persuasive argument I've ever seen.

By the way, I also put money Timpsons way whenever possible, but I'm sure the reasons for that will past most wokeists by.

That’s one tasty looking cake.👍

Stuck to the boycott. Found what I needed in other shops, and wasn’t tempted by things I didn’t really need but fancied after browsing. Also meant I ate fewer ready meals (don’t really buy them elsewhere) which must be good for me and the environment as well.
Sure, it’s just a drop in the ocean to them but that’s several hundred pounds they’ve lost from me. Maybe they’ll change their stance in a year or 5 but will I want to come back when I’ve already changed my shopping habits?

This was the beautiful cake I got from a local independent female baker. It was amazing. My apologies to my local slimming world leader. 😳

John Lewis is an employee owned business and if they go bust 83,000 people will lose their jobs.

The they should alter their business model to remain sufficiently appealing to their customer base to turn a profit. They are a business. That's what successful businesses do.

I don't see anybody in the thread telling anyone not to spend the money in a different shop or use small businesses as they please (why the hell would I, a small business owner, not want that?) but whatever.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a way to discuss this without gloating over mass unemployment? Or assuming anyone who doesn't see things exactly the same way as you is the other side

Every clothes shop in the UK allow trans people in their dressing room. Men are also allowed to work in women's dressing rooms

Why are you talking about transwomen? We were talking about letting men into female changing rooms. Are you saying that transwomen aren’t women? How terribly transphobic!

P.s. no they don’t. HTH

There you go expecting people who oppose women talking about women's rights to prioritize the wellbeing of women.

I’m so sorry. How could I forget to centre the men? I’m so sorry for being a failure as a woman. dabs eyes delicately with silk hanky

John Lewis is an employee owned business and if they go bust 83,000 people will lose their jobs.

Every clothes shop in the UK allow trans people in their dressing room. Men are also allowed to work in women's dressing rooms.

HTH.

I found a local woman owned small shop where she makes candles, perfumes, soap etc and can basically make you anything you want, so you can go "can I get that scent in the form of a candle in this sort of container" and she'll go "yep! just give me X number of days". Which is a better experience for me, means other people receive nicer gifts, and provides an income for the shop owner, who then employs other local women to help run the shop.

Anyone trying to present this as the less ethical, less woman friendly choice is going to have to try a bit harder.

Actually, come to think of it, wtf are you other posters talking about, when you try to guilt us because we won’t spend our money in big stores that pay those working class women shit wages? I’m improving the lives of women, by giving my money directly to them. What are you doing to support women in business or the small independent stores. Fucking hypocritical attitude.

There you go expecting people who oppose women talking about women's rights to prioritize the wellbeing of women.

I would also like to point out that I still spent the same amount of money over Christmas, just not in M & S. So no guilt - M & S's loss was another retailer's gain.