Next, Zara and H&M all benefited from extra sales when their rival Marks & Spencer was forced to halt orders on its website for almost seven weeks after a major cyber-attack that weighed on its own sales.
Clothing sales at M&S slumped by a fifth in the four weeks to 25 May compared with the same period a year before after the website, which usually accounts for a third of M&S’s clothing and homeware sales, stopped taking orders. Sales had soared 11.5% in the prior three months, according to the latest figures from analysts at Kantar.
M&S was forced to stop trade on its website – which sells clothing, homeware, gifts and flowers – on 25 April and did not restart trade until 10 June, so the business missed out on a bumper few weeks in the clothing trade as Britons splashed out on summer essentials during a warm spell.
The collapse came despite an industry-wide pickup in sales, with growth rising to 4% during the four weeks to 25 May, up from 1% in the previous four weeks.
M&S said the cyber-attack was “a moment in time”, and its stores had performed well “across all fashion categories and particularly womenswear” when orders on its website were paused.
“This underlines the strength of our product offer – where quality and value perceptions remain market-leading and style perceptions continuing to increase – and loyalty of our customers. A big thank you to them for shopping with us.”
It said the strong performance in stores meant that M&S had still managed to hold on to its position as the UK’s biggest clothing retailer, by value.
Analysts at Jefferies compared M&S’s performance with its closest rivals over two 12-week periods – the three months to 25 May and three months to mid April – and M&S’s sales growth fell to 1% in the later period from 11.5% before.
In contrast, Next brand sales growth rose to 4.8% from 1.6%. James Grzinic, a retail analyst at Jefferies, said this showed the brand had been “benefiting from the digital disruption seen by major peer [M&S]”.
While Zara and H&M’s share of the UK market is smaller so that Kantar’s market research is perhaps a less reliable guide, it indicates both brands experienced a big pickup in trade, helped by their online service as M&S moved offline.
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Zara’s sales growth rose to 27.8% from 16.1% reported in the prior month, while H&M stepped up to +18.1% from +8.9% previously.
One brand that did not experience a pickup in trade was Primark, where sales growth fell to +2.7% from 3.1%, which, Grzinic said, “confirms that [Primark’s] lack of online exposure prevented any market share gains from [M&S’s] online fallout”.