Marks & Spencer: An exclusive look at their tech-powered transformation

“We want to make sure that we’re really leading from a sustainability agenda.”

Explore Marks & Spencer’s 100 year journey from essential retailer to fashion icon and hear how they’ve embraced sustainability and tech - revolutionizing the industry. From its inception, M&S has evolved beyond merely selling life’s essentials to becoming synonymous with quality and sustainability in clothing. 

In this episode, we hear from Richard Price, Managing Director of Clothing, Home and Beauty, who takes us on a tour of M&S Womenswear - from concept to shop floor. Venture with us into fabric rooms and styling areas and gain insight into the craftsmanship and creativity that underpins their most iconic product - the M&S bra.

Find out more about M&S here.

Find out more about FlexPLM here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena. Location recording by Hannah Dean. And music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where we're exploring how technology is reshaping the retail industry.

I'm your host, Paul Haimes, from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology.

In this episode, We shine a light on Marks and Spencer, affectionately known as M&S, a retail giant with a rich history dating back over 100 years. Known for its resilience and adaptability, they have continually responded to societal needs. Evolving from a staple on the high street to a leading global retailer focused on fashion, clothing, home, and food.

Recently, the team at M&S have been working on building the collection for spring 2025. They've also been leveraging an integrated technology ecosystem, which means designing and developing clothing digitally from planning all the way to market to drive speed and efficiency. This time we have the privilege of meeting Richard Price, Managing Director of Clothing, Home and Beauty at M&S, who gave our producer Hannah Dean an exclusive demonstration of their latest innovations, a sneak peek into their dynamic fabric room, and told us about their commitment to sustainable practices.

My name is Richard Price, I'm the Managing Director of Clothing, Home and Beauty. I've been doing that role for four years. And, yeah, I've been working in the fashion industry for a long time. And I love this industry, you know, lots of the team are working on spring 25 and the designers will be doing their research for Autumn-Winter 25.

So, yeah, it's, there's so much variety, you know, we're still learning all the time about what kind of role technology can play in predicting bestsellers, understanding trend. We can do digital samples and, you know, in sort of kids and women's sleepwear, we're now buying full ranges without making samples.
This is where the women's wear leadership team reside. So, that's pretty much where it all goes on, where it's designed, bought, you know, merchandised. And, you know, the tech teams work there as well, because we shouldn't underestimate how important it is that we have our own technical teams who are making sure that not only is our product stylish and great quality, but also getting that consistency of fit, which is really important for M&S customers.

M&S obviously has a huge heritage, over 140 years since the, you know. Since the Penny Bazaar was first conceived and, you know, women's wear and particularly lingerie within that is a cornerstone of our business and we've always been well known for our, for our bras and knickers and it to this day remains, you know, our probably our biggest market share department.

We've got 40 percent market share of the bra market. We've led with women's wear because it is the, it's the business unit that does lead in terms of style perception. You know, we used to refer to the CEO of the household, you know, the woman is the, the, the, the, the center of the decision making. And often certainly within M&S is influential in a lot of the men's wear as well.
So, you know, we set out. It was almost four years ago to really understand what we needed to do to get her engaged and back loving the brand, you know, not just for quality and value, but more from a style perception perspective. We're now on lingerie, big part of our lingerie business is our bra business and we do over a million bra fits a year.

So as you can see by this sign, they're very proud of their, the bra technology and the skill that we have within our store colleagues in enabling customers to find the right size of bra. 
So you can see from what the team have on the wall here that yeah, this is Spring 25. So we're, as I said earlier, we're, we're over a year away from that and you can see a variety of fabrications. So this department, you know, whilst it is majorly focused on denim in the summer season, linen is a, is a fabric that we've got great heritage. It's really on trend. 

I'm Sarah the Buyer on denim and casual bolts. So Nudison linen for us this year. This is 100 percent linen taking, combining all our best selling shapes and where we've had great success on cargo. and wide and linen combine all of her favorite things and this one was brand new for us.
We actually indigo dyed it so it's going to be a little bit of a challenge for our text to be fair to make sure it doesn't run when you wash it but it's been brilliant for its first week out and I think it's something we can build on for next year because I think it just does that really easy modern mainstream taking denim business into linen and combining two of her favorite things really.

I've heard Sarah refer to the modern mainstream. That's the phrase that we conjured up about three and a half years ago when we really took a close look at who our customer actually was. And, you know, modern being a really important part of that, but mainstream, because we do have 22 million customers who shop with us on a weekly basis.
So it's really, really important that, You know, we understand that kind of modern mainstream. People are talking about us from a trend perspective, you know, we're being featured in the magazines that, you know, the press are really picking up on what we're doing. So it's, you know, it's a really exciting journey at the moment.

As part of that modern mainstream re evaluation, we, we created a campaign called Anything But Ordinary, simply because we were deemed and perceived by our customers. the market really as being a bit ordinary from a trend perspective. So we really wanted to put this mantra out that, you know, we can surprise, we can be anything but ordinary.

And after a couple of years of, of redeveloping the brand, we... We took the decision to, you know, to go out and work with a, you know, a well known fashion icon. You know, we spoke to Sienna's team and she was absolutely thrilled to come and join us on that journey. And I think it's really important to say that we would never have felt confident to have done that two or three years ago, but we've, we got to a level where we thought, do you know what, because our product now feels like it's strong enough to be associated with somebody of Sienna's iconic status.

We normally start out, Our trend inspiration about 18 months prior to a season and our inspiration comes from a number of sources, again, led by our design teams. They travel the world, they monitor what's happening, going on in the movies, in the museums, and even blockbuster movies like Barbie, you know, do have an influence on color palette.
Believe it or not, people even wear the, you know, the print that was in Barbie was being sold by one of our major competitors. So there's, you know, it's all kinds of, you know, national trends really that, that do ultimately filter down into, into the world of fashion. So it's, it's quite fascinating. It's obviously a huge amount of catwalk information that the team is trying...

To use to, to ultimately work out what, you know, obviously a lot of the catwalk trends are quite extreme and aren't very mainstream. So they'll look for themes, for trends, for colors, fabrics, you know, inspiration to try and work out what they think will be relevant for, for the Marks and Spencer ranges and ultimately the Marks and Spencer customers and trying to make sure that it's, as I say, inspired and fashionable, but still wearable and mainstream.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a real skill.

So it goes without saying that fabric is a massive and key part of our business, particularly our women's wear. So now we're entering into our fabric room, which is where we keep all of our base fabrics. We've got much better over the last few years of designing into a fabric library so that we're not having to redevelop and retest and, and, you know, be wasteful.

So we, you know, we're quite disciplined around ensuring that the teams utilize fabrics that we already know. that we know,  wash and wear that you know, a great quality. Yeah, so here's an example of a fabric hanger. This is from a mill called Dongheng. It's recyclable polyester EcoVero mix. So it's like a 10 cell soft fabric, woven.
We replicate this through with our color room as well. So on the two kind of key components, really a color. So we have, I think, about six and a half thousand approved color standards, which I think is more than Pantone. So we've got plenty of choice again for the, for the teams to, to, to choose from when, you know, particular colors come on trend.
Then we've got those colors lab dipped available and ready to go. And again, just makes the whole process much more seamless and, and quicker. So yeah, it's, it's all to hand for the teams. 

So we're, looking at the fabrics for summer 2025, starting off kind of brainstorming, from the trends, what we're going to put into the range, what we're selecting before we do the designs and from that we'll look at like testing the fabric and prices and minimum orders. It's a really fluid process, the way we work with fabrics, so we're constantly checking and catwalks and getting going out there looking at inspiration feeling new fabrics and making sure we've got the best best in the business Basically, we've been doing a bit of work going out and seeing what people are wearing out there on on their evenings evenings out nice restaurant trips to see what people are wearing wearing in the evenings doing a bit of so casual socializing

So this is our pattern room. So we are very blessed to have some real product experts who are able to help us to make and create patterns. Because all garments pretty much are, you know, originate from a pattern. There's lots of components and individual parts to a, to a product. And these guys are, are the masters at making sure that, the patterns are right.
And that, when the garments go into production, that they fit as they're meant to fit. This is creating a little mini factory really so you can actually, you know, you can understand and replicate how a garment's made, understand the complexity before it hits a factory and, you know, we can make modifications and amendments to, you know, the manufacturing process before it even gets out to,  the countries where we make the products.

So as you can see, you know, product being created from scratch before your very eyes in the heart of Paddington. Who'd have thought it?
I mean from a sustainability perspective, it's what customers expect from the M&S brand, and it's becoming more and more important from both a carbon and a doing the right thing perspective that we are really leading from a sustainability agenda. So all of our cotton is better sourced cotton. We have a target to go to 100 percent recycled polyester for the next year.
We're, we're doing, we're making great progress on that. And then, you know, every single process and fabric we're using, we're looking at ways to make it more energy efficient, encouraging our factories and our mills to use renewable energy. Really, really important, so that we can meet all of our carbon targets that we've obviously publicly stated.

And, yeah, we are, you know, it's, it's really at the heart of everything that we do. And, you know, it's something that our customers really expect from us. I think technology is something that is, is becoming increasingly more important across all aspects of the business from a buying and merchandising perspective we are currently in the process of implementing new planning systems, new merchandising systems, And, you know, we talked about sustainability. It's really important now that we've got end to end traceability, and that can only be done through technology, utilising the technology that both we have and that the factories have, and that the mills have, so that we can make sure that all of our products is, is completely traceable.

And, you know, we can, we can demonstrate to the market where, that we are fully aware of where every, every element of our product is, is sourced from. So, you know, we only use. Audited sustainable factories. It's really important. You know, we're very, very focused on human rights and welfare of our workers.
So again, it's really important that we, we have the systems and the technology to monitor that and make sure that we are, you know, we're delivering on all of those promises.
That was Richard Price from M&S and thanks to him we learned all about the company's legacy spanning nearly a century and how they've continued to redefine fashion standards. Now it's time to meet our expert, Bill Brewster, who heads up PTC's retail business unit. Bill, we've spoken on the Third Angle podcast about PLM before with PTCs, Windchill and Arena, but here we're talking about FlexPLM, our PLM solution that directly serves the retail and consumer products industry.

Could you start by giving us a high level overview of what FlexPLM is and what makes PTC a great digital transformation partner for M&S. 
FlexPLM is a PLM solution designed specifically for retail, footwear, apparel, fashion, and consumer products companies, and products. It enables them to be to manage their entire product development life cycle from planning through design development, even in their supply chain, all the way to market.
And it really helps them with everything from design, to specifications, to sourcing and costing supply chain, collaboration, and compliance and even sustainability. Here at PTC, our journey in retail PLM started over 20 years ago. Early on, we learned from our first initial customers. Nike, Timberland, and Reebok, all of which are still customers and Flex PLM users today.
Those companies didn't need just a PDM system, product data management. They needed a more highly scalable, secure, multi geo, multi dimensional PLM capability for managing thousands of different styles and SKUs, even hundreds of thousands of SKUs. every season across multiple brands and multiple product categories.

That's why over the last two decades, the most successful brands and retailers have continued to select PTC as their trusted long term technology partner and Flex PLM as their PLM solution of choice. Flex is a highly intuitive, highly visual platform that enables brands to centralize data and drive collaboration.
Breaking down silos, connecting all their internal teams and key vendors and supply chain partners across the entire value chain, automating the workflows and their processes. And ensuring that product information in Flex, Flex PLM is always current, resulting in faster and more data driven decisions on their products.
Here at PTC, we have over a billion dollar PLM practice. We have a leadership position in PLM across all industries. So this really gives us a unique level of experience in delivering successful PLM projects. Further, we have once again, just recently, been named The outright retail PLM market leader. By quadrant knowledge solutions.

Also IDC, another top tier analyst firm has publicly stated recently that we have the most full set of PLM offerings for the retail footwear and apparel industry. So this leadership position is continually reflected. In the new world class customers that we continue to bring on board with PTC and with Flex PLM.
There are a few areas that we've partnered with M&S on. First is centralization of planning and product data. And this is kind of core to any PLM really. But one of the key challenges in retail is efficiently managing planning and product data across multiple teams, multiple people and multiple divisions, even multiple brands with some customers.

Flex PLM tackles this head on by centralizing all data for Marks and Spencer's clothing and home divisions. This centralized approach not only fosters better collaboration and an efficiency, but also really reduces the risk of errors, right? A lot of people are... Are entering data and managing the data and that institutes risk.
But having this collaborative platform. Really reduces that risk. So ultimately it empowers M&S to bring their products to market that are on trend, just in time with the speed and efficiency needed to ensure that, that they hit their margins and profitability targets across all their product categories.
The second area we've partnered with M&S is on supply chain agility. This modern retail landscape demands an agile supply chain and Flex PLM delivers that for Marks and Spencer with thousands of vendors accessing the system on a monthly basis. Flex PLM provides a complete visibility across the value chain.
This visibility enables M&S to, to navigate the complexities and respond quickly to market dynamics ensuring that they keep their competitive edge in this, this new fast paced retail environment. The third area is alignment with M&S's leadership on their strategic initiatives. At the heart of our partnership with, with M&S is regular alignment meetings with their leadership team.

These sessions allow us to understand their strategic objectives and tailor our solution accordingly. By aligning M&S's strategic planning with Flexible LEM, we ensure that The solution that we deliver evolves in lockstep with their needs, driving continuous improvement, continuous innovation and success.
And then fourth is we have been working with Marks and Spencer and what we call a SaaS plus partnership. So our role with M&S extends beyond just being a, a software provider, a software solution provider, we're committed to developing a true, what we call SaaS plus partnership with M&S. This means we go beyond the traditional vendor client dynamic and, and taking ownership of generating even more value than just the software delivers.

This includes delivering things like new features and functions and capabilities that align with their strategic initiatives, that provide comprehensive support globally. So this 360 degree service approach that we take with this partnership really ensures M&S can maximize the benefits that they get and the value that they derive from their investment they've made at FlexPLM and PTC at every stage of the journey with all their products. In conclusion, FlexPLM isn't just a software solution, it's really a strategic enabler for Marks Spencer's success.
By centralizing all their data, enhancing supply chain agility and visibility while we are aligning strategically. And fostering this true partnership, Flex really empowers M&S to thrive and grow in this retail environment today that's very dynamic and very fast paced.

Thanks to Bill Brewster for his insight, our guest Richard Price for sharing his expertise on M&S womenswear, and our producer Hannah Dean for taking us on the tour with her. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our bi weekly Third Angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts, and follow PTC on LinkedIn and X for future episodes.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena. Location recording by Hannah Dean. And music by Rowan Bishop.