Can Marks and Spencer sail to smoother waters after profits dive?

M&S announced last week that profits were down by a huge 64%.

Bigwigs at the high street giant explained it was partly down to the cost of opening food-only stores.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that womenswear – once a hugely successful part of the M&S brand – is still struggling.

Sales of clothing and homesales are down by more than 3%. In big business terms, that’s serious stuff.

Earlier this month, it was announced former Asda chairman Archie Norman is joining M&S as chairman.

Back in the early 1990s, he was the boss of the supermarket giant when the George brand of clothing created a revolution in how we buy our clothes.

Fast fashion along with your weekly shop? It was unheard of.

It helped to turn around the fortunes of Asda.

When Norman took over, it was in the doldrums.

Now it’s one of our favourite supermarkets.

Norman is charged with helping to turn around the fortunes of M&S.

After on-going poor performance in womenswear, analysts believe they need to get back to the once-loyal customers they know best.

Tamara Sender, Senior Fashion Analyst at Mintel, believes that womenswear is hugely important to the M&S brand. And that it needs to pay some serious attention to one set of customers in particular.

That’s the more mature woman shopper, of course.

“If it really is to stage a recovery, M&S needs to understand what its 55+ female customers really want,” she says.

“It needs to make more drastic changes in order to differentiate itself.

“And it must have much clearer differences between its womenswear ranges like Autograph and M&S Collection.”

The sun may have shone last week, but M&S recently launched its womenswear collection for autumn and winter.

It was well received by fashion editors and it seems M&S has done its homework.

It asked 18,000 shoppers what they actually want and based the collection around that.

Bosses behind the research even sent them prints and asked them which one they preferred.

It remains to be seen whether or not the autumn/winter collection will be a success, but it sounds like a step in the right direction.

It’s probably not surprising that M&S is putting a lot of energy into opening food-only stores.

We all love a treat or two from the M&S foodhall.

Even food sales fell slightly in the most recent announcement, though.

Analysts believe it needs to get back on top with womenswear to really become the M&S we all loved years ago, though.

“Womenswear is the key to M&S and always will be,” says retail expert Richard Hyman.

Watch this space.