Marks & Spencer - Stores - UK and Ireland Shops

UK and Ireland Shops

M&S have over 703 shops throughout the United Kingdom, with nearly 1.2 million square metres (12.5 million square feet) of selling space. This includes the flagship, and largest, shop, Marble Arch, London, on Oxford Street, which has around 16,000 square metres (170,000 sq ft) of shop floor.

The second largest is in Warrington (Gemini), although the forthcoming M&S in Ellesmere Port will take over as the largest outside London. The third largest shop is at the Sprucefield Centre in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. In 1999 M&S opened its shop in Manchester's Exchange Square, which was destroyed in the 1996 Manchester bombing and rebuilt. At re-opening, it was the largest M&S shop with 250,000 sq ft (23,000 m2) of retail space, but half was subsequently sold to Selfridges, the company's second site in Manchester.

M&S has opened a number of stores at out of town locations since the trend to build shopping centres away from town centres became popular in the 1980s. The first was at the MetroCentre, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which opened in 1986. Another notable example is the store at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre at Brierley Hill, West Midlands. This store opened on 23 October 1990 shortly after the closure of stores in the nearby town centres of Dudley and West Bromwich; the Merry Hill store was not originally intended to be replace these two town centres store, but both the Dudley and West Bromwich stores had experienced a downturn in trade as the opening of the Merry Hill store loomed, and both stores were closed on 25 August 1990.

At the beginning of 2011, M&S closed three shops in Lincolnshire. Despite much protesting and local media coverage the three stores in Grantham, Skegness and Scunthorpe were all closed, Marks & Spencer citing poor sales. All three towns have now lost their main high-street retailer and concerns have been raised about the viability of the shopping centres now that M&S have deserted them.

Before Christmas 2006, twenty-two M&S shops were open for 24-hour trading including the recently opened new retail park stores at Bolton Middlebrook and at the Abbey Centre, Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland.

M&S have over 20 shops including three Simply Food outlets throughout Ireland. M&S opened its first shop in the Republic on Mary Street, Dublin in 1979 (now part of the Jervis Shopping Centre). A shop in Grafton Street, followed in 1988, Cork in 1989, then in 1996 the Grafton Street location to its present location in the former Brown Thomas store and finally the first out-of-town shop in Liffey Valley in October 1998. The new Grafton Street shop now boasts M&S's only 'The Restaurant' offering outside of the UK.

The newest Irish outlet in Douglas opened on 25 November 2010 at Douglas Village Shopping Centre, Cork. The Douglas shop is a fairly small outlet devoting some space to the M&S clothing range, and a food hall. The store was badly damaged by floods in Douglas during June 2012 and closed for extensive repairs. The Irish stores use a similar format and product line to the UK stores, including use of the M&S logo (which at Liffey Valley is the only logo used on exterior signs since a June 2007 refit and since opening in Killarney).

The company is committed to the expansion of its Irish operations with a number of new shops opened in 2009 including Clonmel (opened 25 June 2009), Navan, and Limerick which is one of the largest in Ireland at 110,000 square feet (10,000 m2) but will be overtaken shortly after by a new store in Swords, County Dublin at 130,000 square feet (12,000 m2). The largest M&S stores in Ireland are all in Dublin: the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre located in Lucan, County Dublin/Clondalkin in South Dublin, at Mary Street in Dublin city centre and at Dundrum Town Centre in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown.

The company's website has received criticism for having its prices in Pound sterling and not in euro, and for providing a search for its Irish stores through a "UK Store Finder". The Irish Times pointed out that M&S failed to explain why the company is in a position to deliver goods ordered from its website to Brazil, Argentina, Iraq and Afghanistan but not to Ireland. M&S did not comment.