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The End of a Jewish Saint
Lawrence Joffe/London
 BRAVE NEW FACE: M&S; has spruced up its image in the fight against corporate raiders |
As saints go, few could beat St. Michael in the British popularity stakes. It wasn�t the prominent archangel who topped the charts, however, but the house brand of the hugely successful Marks & Spencer retail chain. At one point women were buying a million panties a week bearing a St. Michael label, and two of every five bras sold in the UK carried it. One columnist said St. Michael "was held in the same affection as the Queen Mother," a much-adored figure in Britain.
St. Michael, introduced in 1928, commemorates Michael Marks, a Jew from the Russian Pale who founded M&S; in the late 19th century. The label came to symbolize the English quality of the firm�s wares and the distinctive Jewish roots of Marks & Sparks, as it is informally known.
So when M&S; abandoned St. Michael this March, in what was variously described as an act of courage or panic to ward off a corporate takeover, some detected a severing of the store�s links to its past. Particularly its Jewish past.
The decline was as dramatic as it was unexpected. As late as 1997, the firm was rated the fourth most profitable retailer in the world.
But by early this year, plummeting profits had pushed M&S; shares to a nine-year low. (Last year�s profits were �655 million, about $1 billion, down from the �1 billion plus of the previous few years. In its 400 stores around the world, sales fell by 4.5 percent, to �8.2 billion.)
Anxious executives expected a hostile take-over, and fought back by revamping both customer profiling and the brand im-age, replacing St. Michael with a new label: "Autograph." The corporate raiders have been beaten off, but the idea that M&S; had somehow lost its way raised fears about its future, as well as that of Israeli and Jewish institutions and companies connected with the chain - from charities to Israeli manufacturers on its list of favored suppliers.
Undeniably, M&S; has for years been drifting away from its Jewish heritage. In 1960, its board was replete with Jewish names. Apart from the ubiquitous Markses and Sieffs - the two intertwined and intra-married dynastic families who built the retail empire - there were two Sachers, a Laski, a Goldberg and a Goodman. Nine of the 14 were family members.
Today, very few Jews sit at the company�s high table, especially after the retirement of Lord Andrew Stone last September. Sir Richard Greenbury, who took over from long-time chairman Lord Marcus Sieff as chairman and chief executive in 1988, is half-Jewish. In January, Belgian Luc Vandervelde became the latest chairman.
Barry Kosmin of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research recalls the firm�s once legendary bonds to the Jewish community: "M&S; was prominent, even essential, to Anglo-Jewry from the 1960s through to the 1980s ... partly because of its strong historical links with Zionism; and partly for its success in getting Israeli goods to the British marketplace. M&S; was touted as a flagship of Britain�s commercial success during the Thatcher years. More than that, M&S; openly supported the Conservatives, which showed that Jews were becoming part of a new trend."
The honeymoon was not to last. "All these factors started to become less important as M&S; developed," Kosmin says. "The founding families were less influential on the board, as were Jews generally. There were big personnel changes. In that sense the stock of M&S; is not so high - in every meaning of the term - as it once was with Anglo-Jewry."
M&S; still funds Jewish institutions in the UK, like the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the Marcus Sieff Lectureship at the Centre for the Study of Jewish/Non-Jewish Relations at Southampton University, plus a range of Anglo-Israeli business and social concerns. But its role is no longer central.
This wasn�t intentional: M&S; changed with the times, as did Israel and Anglo-Jews. "There are other big Jewish firms now. Israel and Zionism are not seen as such crucial issues for Anglo-Jewry these days," Kosmin observes.
Still, M&S; continues its "special relationship" with Israel at the shop floor level. It was M&S; which introduced Israeli avocados to Britain. Scientifically bred crustacea from Israel fill the famous M&S; prawn with mayonnaise sandwich, the UK�s top seller in the late 90s. M&S; still relies heavily on Israeli manufacturers - suits from Polgat, underwear from Delta Galil and lingerie from Triumph. Richard Sheldon, head of M&S; operations in Israel, says the firm�s Israeli purchases amounted to $233 million last year. And M&S; is maintaining its Israeli connection: This summer it�s due to open up five outlets, selling men�s underwear and lingerie, in Golf Kitan stores around Israel, two years after it closed down a cooperative retailing venture with the Hamashbir department store chain.
THE STORY OF M&S; IS part of Anglo-Jewish folklore. In 1864 Michael Marks, a refugee from the Pale, set up an open market stall in Leeds, 200 miles north of London. Marks sold household goods, haberdashery, toys and sheet music, just like his competitors. But his knack for marketing set him apart. Soon he had a chain of bazaar stalls, each advertising: "Don�t ask the price: It�s a penny."
In 1894, Christian Englishman Thomas Spencer joined Marks, opening the door to the broader community. Spencer�s schoolteacher wife Agnes helped Michael improve his English, while Tom introduced Marks�s son Simon to cricket.
In a few years, M&S; blossomed into a chain of stores across northern England, based in Manchester.
When he became chairman in 1916 at the age of 28, Simon Marks made a number of commercial changes. But his greatest brain wave was to take on his boyhood friend Israel Sieff as company director.
The Marks-Sieff partnership went beyond business, into Zionist activity. Sieff had supported Zionism since meeting Chaim Weizmann in 1913. Together with Weizmann, Marks and Sieff helped set in motion the train of events that culminated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The following year Israel Sieff headed a Zionist commission seeking to expand Jewish rights, and then served as Weizmann�s secretary at the Versailles Conference. Sieff�s wife (and Simon�s sister) Rebecca helped found WIZO, the women�s Zionist organization, in 1920, and ran it for 20 years with Vera Weizmann. And the Daniel Sieff Institute, set up in memory of a son who had died, served as the base when the Weizmann Institute of Science was set up in 1948.
Zionism was part and parcel of Marks & Sparks. When Simone Ruth Laski, a relative, married a gentile and became Dame Prendergast, Simon Marks wondered whether "we have been such good Zionists, we�ve forgotten how to be Jewish."
Marcus Sieff (Lord Sieff of Brimpton) continues to bridge the English and Jewish worlds as honorary life president of the British Israel Chamber of Commerce and head of Royal Shows, Europe�s premier exhibition of farming and the countryside.
But now, many members of the founding families have chosen different paths. Last year, for example, Marcus�s son David, an M&S; director between 1972 and 1997, was knighted for his work as head of the National Lottery Charities Board.
Why did M&S; hit the doldrums at the start of the 21st century? Many reasons are given. Perhaps it simply became overextended. Or perhaps it moved too slowly. Until very recently M&S; stores refused to accept credit cards at any of its outlets, and the chain eschewed advertising until the 1990s.
One former insider suggests that M&S; is now paying the price of having too many managers. "There is not enough spending on customer service," he claims. "You can see the result in long queues at tills."
M&S; once had an eccentric but effective recruitment policy. It was probably the only British commercial institution that positively sought out philosophy graduates, because they were trained to think logically. Today M&S; prefers managers with a masters in business administration.
Of late, there are signs that the new managers are displaying some of Michael Marks�s ingenuity, paying closer attention to demographics. One example: A trial in Lancashire saw women�s wear sales rise fivefold, after it was discovered that women in the north of England tend to be larger than their more delicate southern counterparts. Managers ordered bigger dresses, sales boomed, and shares rose by 8 percent.
Some see modernization, though, as killing the goose that laid the golden egg. An unhappy customer, Donu Kogbara, says the M&S; reputation was based on British quality. "That�s what attracted consumers in droves when M&S; opened its branch in Paris," she explains. "But now their goods somehow seem shoddier."
Perhaps the changes from the old ways were inevitable, in an age of globalization and international marketing. But then, the commercial heritage of the Marks and Sieff families could not last forever. Nor could the Jewish provenance of the company which had made their fortune.
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