Clothing stock in M&S store

[chrppelroan]

Hiya, just wondering if anyone has went into M&S recently to look at clothes? Unfortunately, as their online ordering service is closed I cannot buy the Striped Linen blend trousers that I’ve been eyeing up for weeks, looking for ‘short’ trousers too as I’m only 5’2😫judging from stock levels in your local stores, is it worth travelling an hour to see if they are in store or are the stores struggling for stock at the moment?

thanks !

I can understand that it takes a long time to create new stock control systems/interfaces. What I can't understand is why they're not shipping stock from the warehouses to the stores. Even if they can't be "accurate" as to what each store actually needs, surely it's better just to get stock out there so customers can actually buy it, rather than being in darkened warehouses unable to be sold because their ordering system is still down?

Same with the Co-Op. 4 weeks now. Our village store is virtually empty. No point going in any more. Sometimes they have milk, sometimes not, same with bread, sandwiches, soft drinks, crisps, chocolate bars. I carried on going in daily for my lunchtime "meal deal" and accepted the lack of choice for the first 2/3 weeks, but this week I've given up and go elsewhere - I literally couldn't make up a meal deal anymore. No crisps at all, no soft drinks at all, and a very poor range of sandwiches. There'll be warehouses somewhere full of tinned and packet goods, crisps, chocolate bars etc - why can't they just send a random few cages of things to the shops so that they at least have something to sell?

One of my clients has 2 convenience stores - there are 3 villages in a kind of triangle, he has stores in 2 and there's a co op in the other. His sales in his stores have doubled and trebled over the past few weeks and are still growing. The Co Op must be losing tens of millions in sales/profits. My client isn't complaining! But at the same time, on the top of his "to do" list is to change his franchise for one of his stores - he's currently using the same franchise/supplier for both, and now realises that if his franchise supplier is similarly hacked/attacked it would probably bankrupt him, so as soon as possible, he's moving one of his stores, so that if the worst did happen, he'd still have another store running normally - he could just about financially cope with one shop severely disrupted but couldn't survive if it happened to both!

Something has gone badly wrong with both the Co Op and M&S. It's not just the hacking in the first place, it's the complete absence of any "Plan B" for when the stock ordering/delivery system fails. Fair enough for a short delay until either the main system is sorted or an alternative system can be used (even if manual), but when it becomes week after week of stock not getting to the shops, it's a secondary failure of resilience planning.

@taxguru not sure if you mean M&S or co-op or both

However, having looked at business continuity planning many years ago, I did used to wonder what would happen when dependence on the Internet increased. Some of the things in development at the time didn't seem to have anything built in for Internet problems.

I didn't carry on working in BCP so I don't know how Internet dependency and "just in time" supply chains work together. In fact, just in time supply chains freak me out a bit generally. I don't know if the co-op situation would be the same if other stores were hit but I suspect it would.

With regards to M&S, a lot of posters are saying that they have good stock in terms of clothing, etc so I guess they are sending out stuff from warehouses.

Can’t guarantee the stock, but M&S long length trousers are often still a bit too short for me - but I have the regular length in the thin grey & white striped linen drawstring trousers, and they’re still a bit long … so if that’s what you’re after I’d try them on in store if you find them.

Because this isn’t just any cyber attack. This is an M&S cyber attack…lovingly created by pishing staff, enabled by a carbon neutral IT team and multiplied in real time ;)

Surely you can just go to the Monsoon website to order anything from Monsoon?

I'll have to do this I think . M&S had a 2 for £40 offer , Monsoon have the same .
I've just got used to Click&Collect

You'd have thought it would just be Ctrl+c then Ctrl+p to a different URL (m&s2.com) 😅

At the risk of showing my age, where’s Clipppy when you need it? “looks like you’re trying to rebuild an e-commerce solution. Would you like some help with that?” 🤣

Went in to my local store over an hour away and it was no use for myself, lots of size 20-22 but not much else

Been looking out for a particular red sundress for my dd for weeks now. All they have are size 16s, many of them.

My local store has very limited stock. Last time a couple months back they had literally no jeans or trousers in under a 14. Loads of ugly bras, again sizes very limited and random.

I think they've almost given up on clothing in store. Hopefully you'll find them online? I wouldn't travel miles on ths offchance. Not the way they seem to be stocking the shops right now.

I've been trying to get hold of a particular M&S sandal in size 3.5 for weeks now. I keep going into my local store to see if they have it in, but no. I don't understand why they can't take my order and manually order the stock in? The product must be sat in a warehouse somewhere??

I watched the BBC documentary about this last night and there was a statement at the end from M&S that stores were now operating normally. That’s simply not true re the clothes . Been in my local store today and everything is 18 - 22 , long etc and very few of each piece.