M&Co wins big at retail awards

Fashion chain M&Co has won Retailer of the Year and Large Online Retailer of the Year at the prestigious Scottish Retail Excellence Awards, held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Glasgow last Tuesday. Created by the Scottish Daily Record

and Scottish Business Insider, with support from the Scottish Retail Consortium, the Scottish Retail Excellence Awards honour the best of the crop in the retail sector and recognise excellence in all areas of retail throughout Scotland.

Scottish-owned Mackays Stores Ltd, trading as M&Co, has enjoyed significant success over the past 12 months, particularly with the overwhelming success of its online shopping site. Launched in 2006, the site www.mandco.com finished last year 120% up, becoming the retailer’s top store in terms of both profitability and turnover. Boasting over 400,000 visitors a month, the website continues to outperform expectations and is expected to achieve record growth for the year 2010/11 owing to an increased focus on multi-channel retailing.

A delighted Iain McGeoch, M&Co Chairman, said: “We are extremely pleased to have won these awards, which recognise the achievements we have made in the Scottish retail sector over the past year. 75 of our 300 stores are in Scotland, as well as our Head Office and distribution centre.”

The company beat the likes of Tesco, Boots and Asda to scoop the biggest award of the evening, with the judges commenting that the traditional retailer went “where others fear to tread”.

Other winners included Scotmid Co-operative which collected the award for Best Multiple Retailer of the Year.

M&Co, formerly known as Mackays, is the third largest privately-owned fashion retailer in the UK. It developed in to a national UK retailer from its small beginnings as a family business with only six stores in the 1960s. The Inchinnan-based company, which specialises in womenswear and also provides menswear, childrenswear and homeware products, recently announced that pre-tax profits doubled last year. The retailer hopes that this success can be built upon with a planned expansion, which is expected to see 10 new stores opening in the current trading year.

Picture: M&Co