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Marks & Spencer opens first store in mainland China

Marks and Spencer

2 October 2008

Marks & Spencer today opened a flagship store on West Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s premier shopping street. The 40,000 square foot store is Marks & Spencer’s first in mainland China and is it’s largest in Asia. Trading over four floors, the store will showcase a wide range of fashion and home products, as well as a M&S Café. It also has one of the widest food ranges of any M&S international store, with 1000 lines including a full wine shop, grocery products and frozen lines such as fish pies, Yorkshire puddings, melting middle chocolate puddings and cakes. Marks & Spencer has renovated the iconic Wings department store with an emphasis on sustainable design. In keeping with Plan A, Marks & Spencer’s 100-point eco-plan, the store boasts sustainable features such as environmentally friendly wall paneling and water saving toilets. The store also features energy efficient lighting and double glazed curtain walls that help insulate the building. Richard Sweet, Managing Director, Marks & Spencer China, said: “We see China as an exciting long-term opportunity and the Shanghai store is our first step into a market that has real potential. China has a fast-growing economy and around 30% of customers in some of our Hong Kong stores are from mainland China. They love our good quality, value products, so we believe there is a demand for M&S in China. We’re delighted to have secured such a prime location in Shanghai and look forward to welcoming Chinese shoppers to the store.”
-ends- For further information: Lucy Kelly (in Shanghai) – 0044 7765 198 993
Dan Masser (in London) - 020 8718 1967/ 07826 905 220 Notes to editors: 1. Photography will available on www.mandslibrary.co.uk. The photos will be in the folder marked ‘stores’ and will be available from around 16.30 (Shanghai time) and 09.30 (UK time) on 2nd October. 2. Marks & Spencer has 622 UK stores. 3. In addition, M&S’ International business has 290 stores overseas, in 40 territories (not including Shanghai) around the world. That includes ten stores in Hong Kong. 4. The Shanghai opening is part of Marks & Spencer’s plans to grow its international business to 15-20 per cent of Group revenues within the next few years and follows recent announcements to expand its store base in growing markets: • February 2008: Announced partnership with Marinopoulos to open 50 stores in Greece and Balkans over the next few years • March 2008: Announced partnership with COMS a.s. to open 30 new stores in Central and Eastern Europe over the next few years • April 2008: Announced partnership with Reliance Retail to open 50 new stores in India over the next five years
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