Retail Technology Show 2025: turnaround at M&S down to culture change says Chairman Archie Norman

“Marks and Spencer had become defensive. I had to change the narrative and the culture”. So said Archie Norman, Chairman at the UK retailer that he joined in 2017.

Speaking on the opening day of Retail Technology Show 2025 at London ExCel on 2nd April, the industry legend who formerly headed up Asda and Kingfisher, added that the “headwinds on cost are the greatest I’ve ever seen” referencing the current cost-of-living and of operating crisis.   

Norman also joked that Percy Pig, the famous confectionery brand that has recently expanded Stateside, “may be tariffed soon” by Trump.  

His opening keynote Q&A conference session with Kate Hardcastle moderating, however, mainly focused on how M&S, founded in 1874 and on every British High Street with 50,000 employees, was a bit vain previously. “For example, every bit of technology had to be redone for them to fit their systems in the past. No, I said, that ends up with a very overcomplicated company” - not to mention inflexible.     

“I had to fracture the culture,” Norman stated, as he explained he “didn’t have time to retrain or refocus leaders” who had become defensive. “I typically change 80% of the leaders at every company I’ve ever worked at. All the jobs I’ve had have been turnarounds because it’s what I’ve become known for.”  

“The unvarnished truth was M&S had to change and we had to liberate people to do so,” - typically lower down the organisational chain. 

The results can be seen by online sales now accounting for 32% of M&S’ sales, starting from a low base of only 17% when he joined - aided by the Covid-19 pandemic disruption of course that helped accelerate uptake. “It’s going to be 50%,” said Norman, who pointed out that M&S had never closed a store before either, except to relocate it.

108 M&S stores have now been shuttered by Norman as he refocuses the business and 7,000 jobs have gone. However, he argued that people are still important at the customer face and he said they “only have a 22% labour turnaround, which is low for the industry”.

Technology

Technology is a key part of M&S’ ongoing turnaround with a refresh of its Sparks reward programme underway so that it can better collect data and target people. “We’re also doing a massive core IT refresh as well,” added Norman.  

“There is an explosion in spending on technology …driven by in cloud data storage demands in part, which is ballooning. That is a key reason why IT costs are going up across the board.”

“M&S’ IT costs are going up well north of £200 million next year.”