Will Marks and Spencer survive?

[MerryPortas]

It’s hard to imagine the full scale of the cyber attack and the impact on their business.

yes, annoying for the shoppers, but they must be losing millions in daily revenue online, and I doubt that’s being backfilled by increased physical footfall.

stock levels are unpredictable - understandably - so confidence is low.

shoppers are creatures of habit, and change is habit forming.

So my question is, do you think M and S is at risk?

I’m 5”3 and size 6 - 8; I find their clothes are mostly too long and too big!

Our local food pantry has opened every night this week with stock from M&S- there is so much they can’t store or freeze it. Thousands of £’s worth of food every night is being given away as their system is down

Go in, tell us about this “2 days” and given what you think you know, what investment in systems might have prevented it? Your post is literally the definition of “a little knowledge is dangerous”, and you say you’ve read what happened - then you’d know this could happen to ANY business.

Its usually people who are weak, not systems.

M&S isn't in house IT

If your IT savy, computer weekly is the place to get info.

They did a brutal disection of a legacy migration I worked on. However, as this IT, you will quite rightly never get the full truth. Unless you work on IT at M&S. All hands will be working on this.

As one of millions who had a Windows virus over a decade ago at work. At times something happens and in that moment your fucked. I could have been the best programmer in the world. I'm reliant on the network team to protect me from a Windows vulnerability no one knew existed at the moment it took Windows out world wide. Your always a few steps behind and that's the nature of it.

When my DS was at senior school, I could only get his trousers from M & S as he was very slim. They were also excellent quality, so only needed to be replaced when he grew out of them.

I didn’t realise how much I used it. I will continue to do so - for basics, uniform, DH buys work things from there, shoes and bags are always good. I use m and s click and collect a few times a month - and that doesn’t include sending flowers and gifts to people.
I can’t wait for them to come back!

At 5'11", you are so far above average height that you can't really claim M&S are catering just for the 'short', when the trousers flap about your ankles, can you?

I'm 5'6" and their regular trousers are far too short. Their Long trousers are about an inch too long so I wear a low heel with them. The issue, however, is that there are never any long length trousers in the shops. Two or three short or regular in every size and a long once a flood. It isn't acceptable and I am far from super tall.

For the above reason, I increasingly now buy trousers elsewhere.

M&S has had lots of huge problems over the years, much worse than this - they spearheaded outsourcing to the third world, destroying our textile industry in the process, then lost most of their business to companies which followed suit. Quality has suffered greatly as they have tried unadvisadly to maintain high profit margins. They have survived these far more permanent problems, they will survive a few cyber attacks.

So isn’t that a good thing? M&S could have thrown it all away but instead have made sure it goes to a local food pantry. I used to work in an M&S food store and the local food banks came every night at closing time to take any food that could be eaten.

Legal Aid was also hacked.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/19/significant-amount-of-personal-data-accessed-in-legal-aid-agency-data-breach-says-moj

Hopefully they'll survive - their clothes and homeware are fantastic, as is their food. Most people I know are patiently waiting for online to resume. So many posts are about not returning, but what's happened is not M&S's fault - think how awful it would be not having M&S on your high street/online 😲

I hope they survive. I've just invested £1k in them as the stock is so low.

ONS stats describe the average UK woman in 2025 as 5’4.5”.

I’m 5”11” (a fraction under), my DDs are 5’10"/5’11”. We all have the same problem in M&S - nothing fits and their “long” lengths are laughable. I hear the same from friends a good 2-3” shorter. Smaller friends who shop in petite ranges (one 4’11”) can buy clothes in M&S which are right both for length and proportions.

The same stats describe the average UK man in 2025 as 5’10”.

My DSs are 6’4” and 6’5”, DH was 6’3”. None of them had trouble getting trousers to fit from M&S - they could get both the length and proportions. The reason they don’t buy there is due to quality and styling.

Furthermore, if you break cohorts down by age the average height in my DCs’ generation is notably more than in my generation. There is also a difference in height averages between economic groups with wealthier groups being on average taller with taller children.

M&S don’t cater for tall women which disproportionately reduces their younger audience. I never really shopped for my DC from M&S because I’d never been able to shop there for myself. My adult DC simply don’t think of it as a “default” place to shop as a consequence.

Other mainstream chains on the British high street manage to cater for my height without difficulty. They obviously see a business value in catering beyond the average height.
If M&S don’t want the custom of tall women (and the disproportionate impact on younger women) that is their business decision to make but it does mean I have zero investment in being able to shop there, nor do my DC or their tall peers.

Not low enough for me - still 30% up on where they were a year ago - I thought the price would go lower.

Hopefully they will, though I guess there's a risk of the knock on effect that people have lost confidence because they are too focused on M&S not having a cardigan they want and moaning about that and how awful it is, rather than this is an attack, solely designed by the perpetrators to cause disruption and financial loss, that is the cause of the missing cardigans, and complaining at and about M&S and the disruption caused and how terrible it is for the customer and how M&S should do something when most of their systems have been turned into digital spaghetti, is just playing right into that.

I find the opposite with Next, I'm average height but their clothes are made for giants! They do do a shorter length but usually not stocked in store. And it's not the same as petite, my body s the same as the regular size I just don't have Amazonian length legs.

At least m and s carry a range of lengths in store.

Yes, I agree, BUT, the contingency plans shouldn't just be trying to avoid attacks and then trying to get IT systems back up and running. As has been shown with M&S and the Co Op, the contingency planning should include working "around" and outside the IT systems to keep the business operating.

If M&S online ordering is down, they should be flooding the stores with stock so people can buy instore instead. As we are seeing, lots of people can't buy instore because they've been "under-stocked" for years at the altar of "Just in time" and shop assistants telling customers to order online!

Same with Co-Op, in the 3 weeks, instead of watching their stores get emptier and emptier of stock (and customers), there should have been alternative systems for getting stock out to the shops, either using manual systems on the same distribution chain or setting up new manual orders with alternative suppliers.

I wonder if these two cases will cause a complete re-think in contingency planning to start to bring in alternative systems around/outside the infected systems, rather than just throwing resources at IT in the hope they can get their existing systems back quickly enough (which they've not been able to do!).

How many weeks will Co Op stores have barely any stock and customers before they get new distribution channels set up? The longer it goes on, the more money and customers they'll lose.

I went to the Telford store on Saturday and they had summer stock out that I know is from last year! The lady said it's been awful and a couple of weeks ago they had barely anything.

From the IT side I "guess" there's not much thought of contingency outside of the IT system.

I once asked why we had a IT system for something the customer used to do on xls ( to be fair this was a LONG time ago). My company said there's never consideration to not move everything onto IT.

So no idea really I'm just guessing but maybe this extent was inconceivable? Like I say, when Windows went down for me for three days. By day two I couldn't do anything at all. Nothing. I got paid and stayed home. Could not do anything without my kit.

Maybe we are killing off human intelligence and resilience as the tech gets more powerful. M&S have very accurate stock tracking. When it works that's fantastic as you don't need ten of one item in one size in stock as it's dynamic real time stock control. Your totally right that that becomes the weakness right now. Maybe they cant adapt to the concept / mindset of mass stock migration from warehouse to shopfloor with lossing control of knowing what's where?

Unlike Primark who just put everything out and it's sold out.

This!
Sniping about the clothes is irrelevant here. As is some hearsay about the management’s reasons for changing IT support or cybersecurity. We don’t have the full picture or an understanding of the company strategy.
A major UK corporation, over a century old which is a big employer and brings choice and quality to the marketplace, has been attacked by a criminal gang intent on destroying and destabilising the UK economy. We should be highly concerned about the implications of this. £1bn has been wiped off the share value. That’s your pension that is affected. UK pension and investment funds are among the biggest holder of shares.
The lack of joined up thinking on the economy astounds me. People who slag off British retailers are the same ones who clamour about the death of the high street. And they will get the economy they deserve. Soon it will be a choice of Shein or Temu.
Think about the bigger picture and the kind of economy you want to live in.
M & S will survive because of its scale and professionalism. But it will be badly damaged. According to the National Cybersecurity Alliance 60% of small businesses shut down within six months of a cyberattack. These are becoming more sophisticated and frequent. How you think about companies such as M&S and the often unjustifiable negativity expressed here has a clear economic consequence.

Completely agree with this. I’m a farmer who partly supplies the coop with fresh food. We were told they don’t want our produce as they can’t get it to the store. How utterly ridiculous. Worst case scenario a phone and a man and a van could get going. Totally defeatist. We managed to sell elsewhere but doubt we’ll be looking to supply the co op again.

I went into a petrol station m'mM&S about 5pm yesterday, masses of fresh food yellow labelled, that's never usually the case. I agree, the concern is that criminals have so successfully attacked one of our most significant businesses, not gripes about clothes. In trousers their pregular fit me pretty well every time but I'm 5'4.5". They always seem to have far more in-store stock of long, which means I do often have to go online to get regular.

Excellent post @auderesperare.