Several Marks & Spencer shops have opened for their last day of trading as part of the retailer’s plans to shut 100 stores by 2022.
Clothing stores in Northampton, Falkirk, Kettering, Newmarket, New Mersey Speke, Stockton and Walsall will trade for a final day on Saturday – while a Simply Food in Bayswater, London, will also close.
Three stores in Fleetwood, Newton Abbott and Darlington have already stopped trading.
Three more – in East Kilbride, Clacton and Holloway Road in London – are expected to close soon.
The latest round of closures comes after 21 stores were wound up by the chain.
As part of the business restructuring, M&S will look to reduce its costs by £350m by 2021.
Hundreds of positions are at risk during the company’s radical transformation plan, including 300 jobs in management.
M&S chief executive Steve Rowe said on Friday: “There are likely to be more redundancies.”
However, he said 86% of the staff working in the stores closed so far had been relocated within the business.
The firm’s chairman, Archie Norman, said M&S faced competition on many fronts, both from online retailers, and from discounters such as Aldi, Lidl and Primark.
M&S has also been moving off its old IT systems and shutting warehouses in its distribution network.
The retailer has already announced that it is closing its warehouses in Warrington and Neasden, and Mr Rowe said on Tuesday that the future of its Donnington warehouse was also under review.
M&S reported a 62% fall in pre-tax profit in the year to 31 March, as it was dragged down by £321m in costs linked to store closures.
From – SkyNews
