Marsha General Will Close 100 Stores In The UK By 2022.

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, January 19th,

Last year, it announced that it would close 100 stores in the UK before 2022 and turn its attention to online sales.

Recently, it announced the closing shop plan this year. The 17 branches in the southern towns of Hull, Ashford, Bedford, Newark and Northwick will be closed one by one, and 1000 jobs are expected to be affected.

In fact, closing stores is only part of the deepening restructuring plan of Marsha.

It is understood that at the end of 2017, Steve Rowe and Archie Norman, who joined the group as chairman of the group last year, put forward the latest five year restructuring plan. Last May, the scale of the store was expanded from 100 stores to 100 stores. After two months, it was decided that 351 stores should be reduced beyond the closed shop plan.

In addition, the new management is committed to rebuilding.

And food business, cost cutting and investment technology are looking for change. We expect to achieve sustained profit growth in 3-5 years.

However, the overall situation of Martha's department is not very optimistic. Sales of two major businesses, clothing and food, have both declined.

Data show that in the first half of fiscal year 2018, the sales of Martha's department in the United Kingdom decreased by 2.2% compared with sales, while the food sector recorded a 2.9% decline, much higher than the market forecast of 2%, while the clothing and home sector fell 1.1% and the market was expected to be 1.2%.

And in the three quarter of December 29, 2018, the British territory of Marsha

Comparable sales fell by 2.2% on a year-on-year basis, of which 60% of the total food business was 2.1% less than that of sales, slightly better than 2.5% of market expectations, but clothing and home business fell 2.4%, much higher than analysts' forecasts and 1.6% in the two quarter.

Michelle Wilson, a Berenberg analyst at investment bank, said that although the sales of food business were better than expected, the performance was still very weak and running at the industry level.

In addition, the 2 billion 782 million quarter of Martha's British market in the three quarter dropped by 2.7% compared with the same period last year, and the international market plunged 15.1% to 262 million pounds.

Group revenues totaled 3 billion 44 million, down 3.9% from the same period last year.

It is worth noting that Marsha management issued a warning in November 2018 that in the face of fierce competition from e-commerce and discount retailers, group sales are unlikely to improve in the short term.

CEO Steve Rowe declined to comment on the timetable for the resumption of sales growth. He also pointed out that in the well-known tough market environment, marks and Spencer's performance remained stable during the key Christmas holiday season, as the group was in pition, and sales figures were in line with expectations.

In fact, in the Christmas holiday season, Martha bought the consumer's habit of relying on sales promotion instead of "black Friday". It only discounted some products before Christmas, and it was different from the slack performance of Martha's online store. Its online sales are increasing during the holiday season.

Data show that website optimization and logistics investment drive the online sales growth of 14% in the three quarter, and now the business has contributed 22.5% of Martha's revenue.

And the reason why Marsha's department is heading for a recession is that British retail is also facing a "cold winter" rather than enough attention to the electricity market.

Statistics show that in 2017, the business growth of Marsha's Department was 5.2%, not half that of the NextPlc e-commerce business of its largest competitor.

In June 2018, Marsha's Department announced that the resources saved by the stores would be put to online sales to speed up the shift to "more commercialized and more digital businesses" and to increase the proportion of sales to 1/3 of the total sales.

From this point of view, although Marsha general merchandise has been developing for more than 100 years, if we do not comply with the trend and make changes to meet the needs of consumers, we will still face the possibility of being eliminated by the market.

In addition, because of the late pition, some of the business of Marsha's Department has been snatched away by other retailers and will continue to be difficult in the future.

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