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M&S Christmas 2025: Momentum Meets Margin Pressure

  • 2 hours ago
  • 2 min read

A crowd outside a bright M&S store with Christmas displays, symbolizing consumer energy and business momentum.
Shoppers return to M&S for the holidays, reflecting a season filled with optimism and operational challenges.

Profits Dip, But Holiday Momentum Builds


Marks & Spencer enters the 2025 holiday season with mixed momentum, sales are up, but profits have fallen sharply.


The retailer reported an adjusted pre-tax profit of £184.1 million, nearly half the £413.1 million earned a year earlier, even after a £100 million insurance payout (Marks & Spencer, 2025). Despite that decline, group sales rose 22.1% to £7.97 billion, largely due to the inclusion of Ocado Retail (Marketing Week, 2025).


The steep profit drop follows an April cyberattack that shut down the brand’s online Fashion & Home operations for six weeks and disrupted order fulfilment through early summer (ABC News, 2025). The company has since resumed click-and-collect and says service reliability has improved heading into December.


Food Shines, Fashion Falters


Busy M&S food aisle contrasted with a quieter fashion section, showing uneven category performance.
Food keeps the tills ringing while Fashion and Home feel the aftershocks of digital disruption.

While Food sales rose 7.8%, Fashion, Home & Beauty revenues slipped 16.4% as M&S worked to stabilize logistics and inventory (Marks & Spencer, 2025). Chief Executive Stuart Machin described the period as “a challenging half but one where we’ve built back customer trust,” pointing to its Reshape for Growth plan focused on store renewal, supply chain modernization and technology investment (Marks & Spencer, 2025).


Digital campaigns are now ramping up, with M&S debuting a Christmas 2025 marketing push that leans heavily on social storytelling and cross-platform reach (Internet Retailing, 2025).


The Real Test: Turning Footfall Into Profit


M&S’s story is a reminder that momentum means little without margin. The retailer’s growing customer base and stronger footfall show consumer appetite is still there, but in a landscape defined by cyber resilience, fulfilment speed, and omnichannel trust, operational precision decides who truly wins Christmas.


Shoppers queuing at M&S checkouts under bright lighting, capturing the challenge of converting sales volume into margin.
Rising traffic is promising, but turning festive visits into sustainable profit is the real measure of success.

For M&S, the festive quarter isn’t just about sales volume; it’s about proving that digital recovery, logistics discipline and storytelling can coexist under one brand rhythm. How well it synchronizes those levers will determine whether this momentum becomes a full-scale turnaround or just another seasonal surge.


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