M&S at Nordstrom: What British Brands Get Wrong About the US Market — And How to Get It Right

As of March 2026, M&S has its first in-store US fashion presence, through a partnership with Nordstrom. Over 60 womenswear pieces from its Per Una and M&S Collection lines are available across 30+ Nordstrom locations and online. For a brand that previously had 38 US stores and closed every single one of them in 2001, it is a carefully considered return — not a bold bet.

To understand why this move looks different from the attempts that came before, it helps to look at the broader record of British brands crossing the Atlantic. That record is not encouraging.

The Failures: What Went Wrong

Tesco and Fresh & Easy

Tesco’s Fresh & Easy is the most cited cautionary tale in British retail’s US history, and rightly so. The grocer spent three years researching the American market before entering in November 2007 with a small-format convenience concept targeting the western US. By April 2013, Tesco announced a write-off of approximately $1.8 billion and the sale of its 200 stores.

The post-mortem was blunt. Fresh & Easy had relied heavily on self-checkout in a market that didn’t want it, offered a narrow private-label assortment that confused shoppers accustomed to broad grocery choice, and targeted “food desert” neighbourhoods in California, Arizona and Nevada — precisely the areas hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis. Tesco had researched American consumers, but they had built a store for British ones.

Topshop

Topshop’s US story is more nuanced and, in some ways, more instructive. The brand launched in New York’s SoHo in 2009 to considerable fanfare, built genuine brand equity among American consumers, and at its peak operated 11 stores across New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta and Washington D.C. It was also sold through Nordstrom as a wholesale partner in the US.

All 11 US stores were closed in 2020 when parent company Arcadia Group filed for bankruptcy. The brand’s US consumers hadn’t stopped buying — the business model at home had simply collapsed under a combination of digital disruption, a declining high street, and governance failures at the parent company level. Topshop’s US failure was not a demand problem. It was a structural one.

The brands that succeed in the US share a common trait: they earn their way in. They prove demand before they commit capital.

The Successes: What the Winning Playbook Looks Like

Charlotte Tilbury

Charlotte Tilbury entered the US in 2014 through the department store channel — specifically Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom — before expanding to Net-a-Porter, Bloomingdale’s and Sephora. No standalone stores, no expensive flagship investment, no assumption of brand recognition. The brand built its US presence through trusted retail partners that already had the right customer.

The results validated the approach. US sales increased 168% between 2014 and 2018, reaching annual revenue of $100 million. North America became the brand’s second-largest market, generating 35.5% of total revenue by 2020. Charlotte Tilbury’s products are now available in 76 countries, with a distribution network spanning Sephora, Nordstrom, Bergdorf Goodman, Ulta and Amazon Premium Beauty.

Gymshark

Gymshark’s US strategy was digital-first from the outset — influencer marketing, community events and a direct-to-consumer model that built a substantial US following before a single permanent store existed. The brand’s Lift: NYC event in 2024 drew queues around the block and generated $600,000 in sales in a single day.

Physical retail followed proof of demand, not the other way around. Gymshark surpassed £600 million in revenue in FY2024, its 12th consecutive year of growth, and relocated its US headquarters from Denver to New York. The brand is now targeting $1 billion in sales, with the US as the primary growth driver.

Pret a Manger

Pret’s US expansion was patient and city-by-city — New York, Washington D.C., Boston and Chicago — with a localised menu and service model that respected the differences between British and American consumer behaviour. It treated the US as its own market rather than an extension of the UK business, and built infrastructure to match.

The Target Proof of Concept

Before Nordstrom, M&S ran a low-risk experiment in the US that told them something important. In November 2022, M&S launched 15 food and beverage products at Target — luxury caramels, drinking chocolate, biscuits and teas — priced between $9.99 and $14.99 for the 2022 holiday season. The collection sold out. Target brought the partnership back in 2023 with an expanded range, with half of the assortment priced under $10.

M&S has not released specific sales figures from the Target collaboration, but the fact that Target renewed and expanded the range is the signal. Retailers of Target’s scale do not bring back partnerships that aren’t performing. The experiment established that an American consumer exists for the M&S brand — in sufficient numbers, and in a mainstream retail environment, not just among British expats.

Combined with 51,000+ customers already shopping the M&S US website annually, M&S walked into Nordstrom conversations with evidence, not assumption.

Why Nordstrom Is the Right Partner

The choice of Nordstrom as the US launch partner for fashion is not incidental. Nordstrom’s customer demographic — aspirational, style-conscious, comfortable spending on quality — maps directly onto M&S’s positioning for Per Una and M&S Collection. These are mid-market British womenswear lines with a quality-value proposition that fits Nordstrom’s floor precisely.

It is also worth noting that Topshop was also sold through Nordstrom before its collapse — meaning the retailer has existing experience with British womenswear and understands the customer overlap. M&S is not breaking new ground in Nordstrom; it is walking into a channel that has already demonstrated receptivity to British fashion brands.

The Broader International Strategy

M&S’s international strategy is explicitly capital-light, built on franchise and wholesale partnerships rather than owned-store expansion. The company uses partners like David Jones in Australia to build brand awareness and test market appetite before committing to any significant owned-store infrastructure. The Nordstrom partnership follows the same logic.

The model makes strategic sense for a brand at M&S’s stage of international development. It preserves capital for UK investment — where the business is currently in the middle of a major store renewal programme — while allowing international brand equity to compound through trusted retail partners in each territory.

What This Means for Retail Strategy

The M&S Nordstrom partnership is a useful case study in what disciplined international market entry looks like. The approach combines several elements that the failures above lacked: a genuine proof of concept (Target food), an existing digital demand signal (51,000+ US website shoppers), a right-fit wholesale partner (Nordstrom), a curated rather than comprehensive product range, and a business in strong financial health with the balance sheet to be patient.

M&S posted record group revenues of £13.9 billion in FY2025, up 6.1% year-on-year, with food sales up 8.7%. It is in its strongest financial position in a generation. That gives it the runway to do this properly — which means slowly.

For retail strategists and brand leaders thinking about US expansion, the lessons from M&S’s history — both its failures and this current attempt — are worth internalising. The US market does not reward transplanted UK models. It rewards brands that take the time to understand what American consumers actually want, find the right channel partners, and build gradually from a position of evidence rather than ambition.

Whether M&S’s Nordstrom partnership evolves into something larger will be the story to follow. For now, the foundation looks more solid than anything M&S has attempted in America before.

Sources: M&S press release · Retail Dive · Grocery Dive · Supermarket News · TIME / Fresh & Easy · Retail Gazette / Arcadia · WWD / Charlotte Tilbury · The Business Desk / Gymshark