Main

Retail Archives

March 11, 2010 - M&S set a sustainable benchmark for the retail world

I spoke at the annual M&S Suppliers’ Conference on Tuesday, which took place in Kensington Town Hall. This venue has a particular resonance for me as it was where the votes for the 1979 and 1984 European elections were counted – and every time I’m back there, I can’t help but recall that sense of consternation that so few people seemed to be prepared, at that time, to put their cross in the Green Party box!

Twenty-six years on and it seemed as if the M&S Suppliers were all voting enthusiastically for the updated version of Plan A! And that was not just because Sir Stuart Rose made a very powerful pitch telling them all that this was their reality whether they liked it or not. By the end of the day, they would certainly have had an unnerving sense of bars being raised all around them, in terms of production standards, transparency, reporting, innovation and so on.

Plan A was launched three years ago, and instantly captured people’s imagination. The combination of carbon neutral and zero waste to landfill pledges, the 100 Action Points, the commitment to invest £200 million, and the sense of all this being at the core of the company rather than being grafted on made an immediate impact. It also gave Plan A the kind of brand profile that took it way beyond the usual corporate responsibility strategies.

Three years on, the £200 million cost has been turned into a £50 million contribution to profit. Forty-five of the Action Points have been delivered, and another 80 have been added on. The ambition level has been ratcheted up several notches, with M&S now committing to becoming the world’s most sustainable (major) retailer by 2015.

Forum for the Future has worked closely with M&S throughout this time, so we are not exactly disinterested parties, but Plan A does provide the benchmark for the whole of the retail world. It’s visionary, it’s applied, it’s comprehensive (as in covering all the sustainability bases), and it’s succeeding in getting whole-company buy-in, through the high level “How We Do Business” Committee, chaired (and driven!) by Sir Stuart Rose.

So it’s well worthwhile checking out the new version of Plan A, available at: http://plana.marksandspencer.com/media/pdf/planA-2010.pdf

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on March 11, 2010 11:50 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]