Marks And Spencer Flowers

Marks & Spencer marks centenary in Colchester

A HUNDRED years ago, a small penny bazaar opened in St Botolph’s Street, Colchester.

Hard to believe it is now a thriving department store serving an average of 70,000 customers a week and employing 156 people.

Marks & Spencer marked its centenary in Colchester yesterday with an all-day celebration.

Linda Clench, 61, of Cavendish Avenue, Colchester, has the bragging rights of being the longest-serving employee in the Colchester store’s history – 46 years and still counting.

She recalled how it was all very different when she started.

She said: “It was a lot stricter then. We had to wear long, pale blue overalls with a navy belt. In the mornings we had to line up and be inspected. If we didn’t look right, we had to go back upstairs and come back perfect.”

Mrs Clench said, back then, fruit would be displayed on each of the cashier’s counters and customers would ask for how much they wanted, like a traditional greengrocers.

The store was also a lot smaller and clothing had to be folded in just the right way, a habit she admitted had stayed with her to this day.

She said: “It has got more relaxed since then. When I first came here all staff had to be called by their full names.”

Asked what had kept her there for so long, she replied: “I do love working here and I wouldn’t want to be at home. We have some lovely regular customers, too.

“They always come and say hello. When I had done my 40 years here, I had customers bringing me flowers.”

Jewish immigrant Michael Marks opened the first stall in Leeds, in 1884, selling goods for a penny.

Over the next ten years, he opened more stalls and invited Tom Spencer to become a partner. The business grew from there.

In Colchester, it opened in 1911 at 3 St Botolph’s Street.

It sold a range of items, including sewing equipment, biscuits, toys and sheet music.

The store retained the policy used by Mr Marks of selling almost everything for a penny, apart from a few luxury items.

Goods were displayed on tables and the “admission free” sign outside encouraged people to browse – a marked contrast to most shops at the time, where customers had to ask the shopkeeper for goods stored behind the counter.

But by 1931, larger premises were needed in the town, so the store relocated to High Street.

Over the next few decades, that premises underwent several extensions, including a revamp of the first-floor in the Fifties.

David Hunt Design » Marks and Spencer: Flower Packaging

As shown in the example of existing packaging (left) you can see the need to improve the packaging of flowers.Currently the only purpose of the packaging is to protect the flowers throughout the supply chain:

• Basic plain wrap

• Plant Food is not integrated

• No provision for water

• Requires another poly bag in transport

• Requires buckets at the point of sale

• Customer requires a secondary poly carrier bag

My design added a pattern to the cellophane to give the perception of a ‘fuller bunch’ and also to frame the flowers for display.

The solution answered the needs listed above whilst still reducing the material used. I wanted to add functionality to the packaging; this would intern benefit M&S through a more streamlined process at distribution and post of sale level but also the customer, through convenience.

One of the main advantages the current packaging was the ease of production – just one piece of tape applied by hand to keep the flowers secure within the ‘collar’ of cellophane. There is consideration for this in my design. There would still only be one single piece of tape to secure the flowers in their packaging and still the ease of just placing them inside the packaging in a similar way.

The tape creates a ‘belt’ enhancing the framing effect for the flower heads and also containing its own water reservoir at the base of the product. This results in enhanced product life; convenience for the customer and the possibility of a streamlined, distribution network and point of sale display as from both environments buckets containing water can be removed.

This was run as a ‘live’ brief, meaning that throughout the project we had presentations with Marks and Spencers Design executives.