M&S launches The Sports Edit on its website as it “goes into battle on sportswear”

Marks & Spencer has today launched The Sports Edit on its website as part of its wider ‘Brands at M&S’ strategy and its deeper focus on sportswear.

It follows M&S’s acquisition of the fast-growing online sports retail platform at the start of 2022, and The Sports Edit will now enable M&S customers to shop over 200 carefully curated womenswear products from sports brands including Girlfriend Collective, Beyond Yoga, FP Movement, Hoka, Asics and Veja – with more leading brands to follow through 2023.

The brand partners have been carefully selected by The Sports Edit and M&S to sit alongside the retailers’ market leading activewear brand, Goodmove.

Katie Bickerstaffe, Co-Chief Executive at M&S, said: “This year, we’re backing our growth categories with confidence and going into battle on sportswear. Building on the strong foundation of Goodmove, we’re combining our brand loyalty with the expertise of The Sports Edit to offer our customers an online sports retail platform which is a one-stop-shop for health and wellness.

“The launch of The Sports Edit as an integrated hub on M&S.com demonstrates the strength of our leading omnichannel platform; which continues to make M&S an increasingly attractive brand partner.”

The dedicated sports platform combines the best of The Sports Edit, featuring expert sports content curation where customers can shop by brand, activity or product type, with all of the advantages of shopping with M&S - such as free Click & Collect to over 700 stores – “to offer customers a seamless shopping experience”.

The launch comes at a time when health and wellbeing is front of mind for consumers, with the latest insight from the ‘M&S Family Matters Index’ showing that 44% of consumers are planning to do more exercise and take their physical health more seriously this year. That trend is mirrored on the M&S website, as searches for trainers in January 2023 were up 30% on the same period of 2022.

As well as housing third-party sportswear and apparel brands, the sports retail platform has a distinct look and feel, and is “easy to navigate by your favourite brand, product type or sports activity”.

Nick Paulson-Ellis, Founder and CEO at The Sports Edit, said: “At The Sports Edit, we have a proven capability in brand curation and emerging brand identification – we’re experts in curating product and content, relevant to our customers lifestyles.

“We have worked closely with the team at M&S, to understand their customer lifestyles in order to hand-pick the very best of The Sports Edit for M&S.com. The launch builds on M&S’s foundation in sportswear to take it to the next level, filling gaps in areas that require specialist product, such as trainers to offer a platform equipped for the future.”

Launched in 2020, Goodmove has grown to become M&S’s biggest in-house brand – selling 1.6 million products annually. The latest collection for spring 2023, which launched in December 2022, features womenswear, menswear and kidswear for the first time.

The global sportswear market is estimated to be worth £8.6bn, with 56% of the market dominated by brands. The curation-led approach on the M&S website now offers its customer a new way to shop sportswear apparel, from fitness and performance wear to athleisure.

The Sports Edit launch continues to build on the retailer’s market-leading position in full price women’s activewear sales, with third-party brand partners complementing the core range and filling gaps in product areas.

Timeline of M&S’s sportswear focus:

• January 2020: M&S launched activewear collection, Goodmove
• March 2021: ‘Brands at M&S’ officially launched introducing several clothing brands to M&S.com
• March 2022: M&S invests in The Sports Edit as part of its ‘Brands at M&S’ strategy
• May 2022: Goodmove launches on The Sports Edit
• February 2023: The Sports Edit launches on M&S.com