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Looking lean and sharp in a Marks & Spencer blue and green check shirt, black jeans and designer white trainers, 55-year-old Stuart Machin bounds into his ninth-floor London office. We are in his company’s HQ and the word “Onwards” is boldly printed on a poster behind him. This is what the M&S boss feels is the necessary direction of travel as he offers me sample slices of M&S Panettone (he found a family firm in Italy to make it). Pushing onwards is how he guided the firm and its 32 million customers through one of the worst-ever cyber attacks in the UK. The cost to M&S has been around £300m, so regaining momentum for growth and profit is what drives him. “We set out three objectives – regain momentum, get back on track with growth and accelerate transformation. It is what we are doing, we are regaining momentum,” he says. He calmly understates surviving the most damaging cyber attack in British high street history “The first half of this year was an extraordinary moment in time for M&S. However, the underlying strength of our business and robust financial foundations gave us the resilience to face the challenge and deal with it. We are now getting back on track.” He refuses to dwell on the attack: “It’s in the rear view mirror now”. No one has yet been brought to justice over it, but he says a line has been drawn under it. “I’ve learned that you only have to be unlucky once and they have to be lucky once, but having put in the best cyber security, I have to concentrate on what is now best for our customers in the best cyber security. With that done, we just have to do what we do best: to sell best-quality goods at best prices,” he says. We meet the day after Rachel Reeves’s “waffle bomb” pre-Budget speech and Machin is upbeat about the general direction of his latest company results – despite profits being cut in half by the six-week closure of online shopping. He is less confident about the chancellor’s proposals to turn round UK Inc’s finances than he is about M&S’s journey back to prosperity. Machin’s M&S seems to be working. Food sales have defied gravity – up 7.8 per cent – and City analysts in the Square Mile have purred with approval. Too often they have been catty and caustic about struggling M&S CEOs. Crucially, Machin has steered M&S to be on-trend in fashion (its top seller today is a faux fur coat) while maintaining its share of traditional favourites (men’s underwear is having a renaissance for comfort and style). Much of this is down to a driven and charismatic CEO who is obsessed by detail and the pursuit of good value. He knows every detail about retail, having started work aged 16, stacking trolleys. For his first job interview 40 years ago, his grandparents bought him a dark formal suit from M&S. It was a propitious gift, even though today he almost never wears a suit and is famously tieless. Characteristically, he downplays the inspiring personal trolley-stacker-to-top-exec meteoric success story. “It’s a team effort. It’s about us all – the whole leadership team takes this approach – whether that’s Alex with his Food team or John with Fashion, Home and Beauty. We have got a very strong leadership team, they’re all on it, they’re all working hard. It really is down to a brilliant and motivated team.” While it’s very much his irrepressibly energetic personality and workaholic obsessions that have raised the company’s trading results and confidence, he values listening to others. The womenswear lead Maddy Evans has been widely credited with the brand’s fashion renaissance and for its appeal to new customers in the 35- to 55-year-old age range. And a “Straight to Stuart” initiative was launched as a staff-feedback scheme allowing employees to submit ideas and concerns directly to him. This has generated more than 18,000 suggestions. Every day he goes into a store and buys something – he likes to try food he has not tried before. On a permanent mission to learn more and more about M&S products, he always wants to know: can it be better? If trousers have a belt loop he will know its exact width, stitching pattern and colour tone – and he’ll have an opinion about how it can be improved. “Yes I am very hands on. But this isn’t just about me; all my team are hands on.” One product under his spotlight now is M&S pain au chocolat. “I like the chocolate to be slightly hard and crunchy and not melt too much. That’s my view, but it doesn’t mean I am right. In the end the department heads decide. I can go into a food review room and be brutal with my opinion.” For the second time he says, “Doesn’t mean I’m right!” but staff find he normally is. When he saw the popular faux fur coat at a preview meeting, he agreed with his stylists that it was going to be a big seller and went a step further and said, “Order two or three times the quantity you were planning.” A new salmon and watercress sandwich was launched after being tasted by him; a debate ensued about whether it should have butter or mayonnaise on the bread. Socks. Shampoos. Bottled water. Tom Kerridge’s kitchen knives range. All will go through the personal SM filter for M&S customers. He does not hold back on criticism: “Sometimes we over-sauce things and make them too rich.” Hosiery is also very much on his radar. “We never quite got hosiery right last year. I am saying to the team, ‘Could you wear those with a heel?’ I love the discussion of the product.” Machin is also a big picture man and he is as critical of the government’s handing of the UK economy, as is almost any high street CEO. Why? He says he would fight like a rat in a corner to do anything to protect his customers, their value for money and his profit and ability to pay his staff top whack. He feels they are about to be under siege with the budget. Would Reeves survive one of his product appraisal meetings? Not at this moment. His view on her pre-budget speech warning of manifesto-breaking tax rises? “A presentation of nothing” is what he calls it. He is worried for his customers’ financial wellbeing and it brings to mind his 77-year-old mother – grafter and key influence on his career. “She has limited savings, a pension, and has worked all her life. A home and a small rental property essentially form part of her pension plan. She is worried about every tax now and is worried about what is going to happen next. ‘What do I do now? I had better watch what I’m spending. The chancellor has said we all have to do our bit.’ She is worried.” Translation into M&S : consumer confidence falls, sales fall, profit falls. His mother inspired his tremendous work ethic. He would work every evening even at the age of 16, rush home to change and then catch the 304 bus to Safeway hypermarket in Kent, where he stacked trolleys. The recruiter – a man in black suit, white shirt and black tie – was amazed at seeing a teenager who actually wore a suit and had also written a handwritten letter pleading for the job. The Machin of today is steely as well as folksy. He has the silver wit of a talk show host and the ruthless rigour of an accountant. He is a listener (he answers emails up to midnight) but is not to be messed with. And that includes the chancellor. He criticises Reeves for blaming everyone apart from themselves. “She blamed Putin, Trump, Truss, Brexit, the previous government, but they take no accountability for the last 14 months whatsoever on their decisions and choices. And I haven’t seen anything yet on growth.” His simple verdict is that they did not have a plan. He has already waded into the political debate with an article in The Times urging less tax, less borrowing, less regulation. He says that his staff’s pay might have gone up if there had been less burden created by rises in NI. “Imagine if they now unravelled national insurance and I have got another £65m to bring prices down. I have all my suppliers passing through the costs onto us. How can we endlessly absorb that ? It means lower growth everywhere. Whatever it is, you’ve got less in your pockets and that immediately flows into the economy.” There are other difficult problems from tax under Labour. “Don’t forget the packaging levy. We have had £50m this first half of the year, £25m on national insurance and £30m in packaging costs.” He is cross that business gets charged by weight of packaging, be it glass or paper or plastic. “This is not just for plastic, any packaging is a new tax. Then came national insurance. A double whammy.” He now fears a third factor coming: the deposit return scheme – an environmental programme designed to encourage recycling of drinks containers. “This is basically putting these vast monstrous bins in a store, which is going to cost us £27m. To operate it will be £7m a year. I was in Ireland the other day and they break down every 30 minutes.” He would like to avoid wrecking stores with these vast silos, especially the smaller ones, where they not only look horrible, but are inefficient and expensive. He believes this sort of eco collection could all be done at people’s homes through bin collections. “Yet the government never mentions some of us only get them done once every three weeks.” And he’s concerned about the employment rights bill. “I would say we are a fair employer but these things are more bureaucracy. So when you think what’s happening it’s not just tax it’s the added cost of regulatory burden.” Machin will not be drawn on which party he voted for in the last election. But he was a CEO who Reeves went out of her way to woo before Labour took power. If there was ever a honeymoon period it is clearly over. “When Rachel Reeves was coming in, it was all about growth and so my anticipation was a very pro-business agenda. I don’t like the words ‘working people’. I think I’m right in saying that 40 per cent of the population doesn’t pay income tax. We were hoping for some very bold moves. What would we like to see in our budget? No more taxes to hit consumers of the everyday economy – and retail is a big part of that.” Machin asked his internal advisors on government affairs what the budget looked in terms of tax. “He wrote back to me advising a rise in the basic rate of income tax by 2p and then cutting employee National Insurance by 2p would mean there’s no impact for working people – but it will hit landlords, pensioners and self-employed. When I asked how much it would raise he said £6m.” Would he want that? “No, because it’s still more tax. And when I asked the same colleague about raising the higher rate of tax he said it would not raise much. To be honest, very little. If she does raise the basic rate it will be for the first time since Denis Healey.” While he remains optimistic about how Labour has helped planning (M&S will be expanding with new stores as well redeveloping their Oxford Street flagship), he returns to his shopping list of issues he has with the Labour government. He’s vehemently opposed to the tractor tax and is firmly on the side of farmers and British food. “Putting farms at the heart of the nation’s food strategy is critically important. And I think the inheritance tax needs to be unravelled for farmers.” One thing the Labour government can’t do is dampen his Christmas spirit. His festive preparations began 11 months ago when he asked the designer Kelly Hoppen to make crackers and a Christmas candle. That was his personal call. Of course he passed his suggestion on to his team. And guess what? Kelly Hoppen crackers and candles are already predicted to be sellouts at M&S. He is hoping this Christmas will bring even greater cheer, as by then the cyber attack will be a distant memory. His pursuit of better and fresher should bring good cheer to customers and shareholders alike as he pushes onwards with his mission to keep M&S prosperous and safe.
