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?

Thank you. People need to look beyond the length of the trousers to see what is happening in the world. The economic battlefield is already here.

Maybe @auderesperare soem people can only handle the little stuff, like trouser lengths because the other stuff it frightening.

Good post though.

The other stuff is definitely frightening. I sympathise, I really do and I’m not blaming or shaming anyone. But the frightening stuff is already here. We need to wise up about it, see it for what it is (an attack on Western democracy) and decide how we’re going to react to it individually and collectively. I feel optimistic about the future but I know we need to rediscover our values. The race to the bottom will destroy us economically. We need to decide what we care about and act accordingly.

Very interesting comments @auderesperare

But what can little people do? I alreadly have to shut out the horrors of Gaza, just to enable myself to get up in the morning.

Its not sniping about a store to say they don’t provide goods you can use. Its a simple fact which means the store is irrelevant to me as a shopper.

M&S, like John Lewis will survive this just like both have survived prolonged periods of diminished quality, poor buying choices and poor service due to the strength of the brand. Both have had substantial ups and downs over the past few decades of the type that killed other high street brands. That brand strength is built into the shareprice for M&S and valuations for both companies - as pp say, M&S share price has held up relatively well. Business impact figures for small businesses are irrelevant to organisations of this scale.

JIT supply chains have been with us for decades and are a key contributor to keeping prices down. British customers, especially food customers have been notoriously more interested in low prices than provenance and want the same produce all year round (by comparison with European neighbours). You simply can’t backfill a large and complex JIT supply chain by sending stuff out randomly to stores. Apart from anything else stores don’t have the warehouse capacity for storage any more. Business Continuity Plans for logistics will typically prioritise local distribution/critical items where they can but they cannot get close to a fully integrated system (and of course they need to be regularly tested).

These attacks have been happening at scale for years. Companies don’t want them in the press and quite often pay up instead. Attacks will often be targeted at smaller subdivisions of big names where low investment and out of date hardware, software or processes with lack of good maintenance makes them vulnerable. Its a huge business for organised crime - that is the main motivation behind most of the attacks I’ve seen, nothing more sinister than money.

M&S have confirmed this morning that the police are focussing on an English speaking hacker group. So, not Russia.

'English speaking' doesnt mean they are English - it means that is a language that can be used by all those involved.

The Times reported that they were using Russian software.

When the same group attacked casino groups in Las Vegas they had teamed up with a Russian group.

I'll be gutted if they fold and can't believe some of the vitriol on here.
I did my "big shop" there yesterday, normally it's Tesco, but every little helps (lol) in getting M&S to trade their way out of this situation. Unbelievably I spent less than normal, yet got everything I needed and the fresh produce was better quality, so I think this will be a regular thing.

I sympathise. I think the best thing you can do is to be aware of what is going on. Consumers can also support the businesses that support the UK economy because it’s the UK economy that supports the services you and your family need.
You don’t have to spend money to support a business.
You can like and share their content on social media, give them a five star review -admittedly this is more valuable to small businesses and local businesses than, say, M&S.
If you want them to stay open in your locality, then do visit them regularly and spend money if you can. Probably the most important thing is just word of mouth. If you bought something you love or tried something new, mention it. At the very least, don’t mindlessly run them down.
it’s super easy to criticise. It’s also easy to destroy things and it’s difficult to build something from scratch.
I’m not suggesting only buy British or any such nonsense. In a mixed economy we need to shop to make our lives better and easier and of course, if a business gets it wrong you should complain, but be mindful of where you spend money and don’t feed into an white noise of moaning and complaining as a default setting.
It’s a really tough environment for businesses just now. The FT recently reported that more solvent businesses are going into liquidation voluntarily than ever before because the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. These are businesses employing staff and paying taxes. That just stops when they shut their doors. We should be worried about this.
Some gigantic overseas retailers pay virtually no UK VAT, very little tax at all in the UK, and have struck a deal with the UK government whereby they pay virtually no shipping charges. This gives them a huge financial advantage over UK-based businesses. As a result they have artificially undercut market prices to grab a market share which means UK companies, who pay minimum wage, and use manufacturers who are ethical and abide by our heath and safety rules, will eventually be forced out of business.
These are companies, tied closely to foreign governments, trying to build monopolies or near monopolies in the West and who really don’t have Britain’s best interests at heart.

Just tried to explain to some people in real life that there are people on here who are happy M&S got hacked and 60,000 people could lose their jobs because the trousers are too short.

Perhaps if M&S could stretch their targets to the ludicrous distorted lengths you have stretched the sentiments on this thread their trousers would fit more women.

Oh dear, someone's sense of humour got hacked.

The website and app are both down as they are making some updates.

App is still down nearly 7 hours after @PeachPumpkinpost. That’s a long time for it to have been taken down. Will online orders be allowed when it comes back up? Or has something else gone wrong following the cyber attack?

There’s now a sale IN STORE ONLY. Can’t see how that works - do you pay full price if you order online?

Just guessing but maybe the sale things aren't available online

The stuff in the sale is very unlikely to be online and if it is it is not the nice summer stuff, I had a look this morning, it looked like the unwanted stuff like you get at the end of a sale and there wasn't much of it. I was hoping for some of the chinos but there was nothing like that

There’s only a core range online.

They are fully insured and will get paid for subsequent losses.

M&S sell their food range with Ocado, so they will still be making sales from that. They also have franchise stores at railway stations, which see a lot of footfall.

I hope that this isn't going to be an excuse for them to close their High Street department stores. It wouldn't surprise me though, Debenhams didn't seem to put up much of a fight.

Has that been confirmed now, I read previously that the limit on their insurance policy wasnt anywhere near the total amounts it's cost them to write all the new systems etc and that was a few weeks ago. It must cost more every day it goes on for

When the claim fully lands it will be in excess of £100million and is being processed by Allianz, so they should be good for a period of time, as long as they don’t suffer a secondary breech, and get staff trained up quickly!

Google suggests that the total losses will now be much more than the amount of insurance they have although it is he same but of information regurgitated by all the websites

They wouldn't be saying their profits will be severely affected though if everything was covered by insurance which does seem to confirm they will over their amount of insurance they have

The insurance thing is interesting. It could have a massive impact. Poultry farmers can now not get Bird Flu insurance as it’s deemed too risky by the insurers. They spent a few years paying ever increasing premiums for less cover and now there is only one provider and a lot of farmers can’t even get that one.

if these cyber attacks become more regular I can see the same thing happening.

The best hackers are the Finns- they all speak English.