M&S breaks tradition, gets more agile in style

London - Shoppers usually blame dowdy clothes and tired stores for the painful decline of Britain's former retail powerhouse Marks & Spencer (M&S). But the parts of the business that customers never see could hold the key to its revival.

After hiring new designers, overhauling its online offering and giving a facelift to stores, M&S still needs to push home its most ambitious project: overturning more than a century of retail history by taking full control of its supply chain.

The drive to design more products in-house and then source them faster and more flexibly is a radical departure for a company that, since its founding in 1884, has relied on third-party suppliers to create, manufacture and ship most of its garments.