M&S to sell on Amazon website
HIGH STREET stores group Marks & Spencer is teaming up with Amazon to sell its clothing over the internet. The troubled retailer expects its clothes and homewares to be available on the Amazon website in 'just over a year'.
The company sees the radical deal as an innovative way to lure more customers - particularly younger shoppers who are used to buying books and CDs from Amazon. However, some industry experts fear that Amazon will be able to poach customers from Marks.
M&S marketing and e-commerce director Steven Sharp said the tie-up 'allows us to take advantage of the increasing interest in buying over the internet'.
He added: 'Amazon has around 6m registered users [in the UK] and some of them will be people who don't shop with us at the moment.' Sharp said that the Amazon.co.uk website will eventually be able to sell exactly the same ranges as the M&S internet site, though Amazon will be able to tailor its offer. He added: 'This is another way of getting more customers.'
Meanwhile, Amazon will work with Marks to upgrade the existing M&S website. Sharp admitted: 'At Christmas our systems started to creak a bit because they were getting overpowered by the demand.'
The website has more than 24m visits a year. Rather than spend millions of pounds on new systems to cater for increasing numbers of orders, M&S would rather let Amazon do the work so that it can focus on trying to revive retail sales.
Marks refused to say how much it will pay Amazon for its technology. Sharp said: 'This is the cheapest, quickest and slickest way of achieving growth.'
At the moment, the retailer has 'no plans' to sell food over the internet, but Sharp did not rule this out, adding: 'Who knows where this may take us?'
