M&S Blue Leopard Print dress - big campaign banner but online only and sold out?!

[BakeOffRewatch]

I rarely go into M&S (that is more than a food hall anyway) and saw a big banner of this dress and thought “ooh!”. Not on the shop floor,

Go home, look online and it’s online only and completely sold out!

What’s the point? The other dresses in store were not nicely shaped or trendy so not like I made a similar buy by being drawn in.

www.marksandspencer.com/animal-print-belted-midi-column-dress/p/clp60542188

In my example above, the picture says that the item is "New", there are no reviews and it is only available in a size 12. That doesn't meet any of the suggested criteria for stock being sold out really fast (like the Kate Middleton effect on Reiss dresses or LK Bennet wedge heels).

Their website is shocking at keeping up to date with stock! It really is. As people are moving away from shopping in the high street or in shopping centres and more to shopping on-line, they really need to spend a LOT more money on their website.

@Rina66 i ended up buying this dress in blue from John Lewis, thanks for the push towards whistles! www.whistles.com/product/amelia-cape-sleeve-dress-34500.html I love it, and being plain will get loads of use out of it. There’s no material at the armpit so can live with it not being cotton.

I tried on the whistles cheetah print dress in pink, that’s lovely too, really floaty. The Temperley cotton dress looked AWFUL, like a particularly unflattering hospital gown… and there wasn’t a lot of ease around the bust so I would have had to go two sizes up.

@LookItsMeAgain , that’s so frustrating! I get what people are saying that marketing leads to demand, leads to selling out but surely they anticipate demand and hence order more. I was in a different M&S yesterday and they had lots of shirts and skirts in the same blue leopard print in stock.

The John Lewis thread was glitching for me yesterday morning only showing me 2 pages of 307 items in both app and browser.

My first time walking around a shopping mall in years yesterday (surely an athletic sport with a toddler?!) and I’d forgotten how hard it is to find something that fits. Will be getting the Boden dress next time they do a 20% discount code, a dress that fits my bust, flatters, and is breathable and warm is not to be taken for granted!

These pictures will have been shot months ago and its really hard to control stock levels if something is really popular and flies out of the store. If a brand knows its going to feature a style heavily in marketing they will often hold back some stock until the imagery launches, or try and increase the buy with the supplier but retail is suffering massively from supply chain issues and side effects from the lockdown in China. It's quite possible that the marketing images were approved and then the shipment of stock was delayed, or reduced in quantity. Also, marketing imagery isn't about selling just that one dress, it is about generating traffic to the website and getting people through the door. You might not have bought anything else when the thing you spotted was out of stock, but a lot of other people will have.

That’s really interesting about the supply issues @FoamyBanana