Idioms with lose are highlighted and explained below. If you use idioms when using English you will sound more natural and possibly even more like a native speaker! Marks and Spencer is a famous UK company with shops in many British cities. This text is about the problems the company has. 
Marks & Spencer seems to be in the news a lot lately. The company has improved food sales but their clothes have not been as popular with high street shoppers. M&S has reported its lowest clothes sales figures in over a decade. This has led to a number of senior staff leaving the company. Their replacements will hopefully be more successful and increase sales and profits. That is the idea anyhow. But what exactly is the problem? M&S is a very famous clothes retailer, famous for quality and affordable prices or it was. For some it is now a lost cause. 1) Experts and many customers say M&S has lost its touch. For years it was the best retailer with the highest quality clothes. Tourists would visit London just to go shopping and the first place they went to was M&S. Every year they had new clothes and labels that sold well. That’s not true anymore. They seem to have lost the Midas touch. Shoppers now go to other stores because they are more fashionable and cheaper. 2) Some shoppers believe M&S have lost their way. They now have too many labels and have lost their identity. They want to sell clothes to young people, middle-aged people and the elderly. That’s very difficult. Their competitors focus on one group and it explains why M&S have lost track of several markets. 3) M&S has had problems with timing. It hasn’t had enough winter clothes to meet demand this year. This meant that customers went to other shops. Maybe they didn’t order enough or maybe there was a problem with delivery but a few critics claim they have lost the plot entirely. They don’t seem to understand what they need to sell, when and how much of it. This explains their current losing streak. 4) Marketing and advertising is important for a business but M&S seems to have lost touch with reality. This year the company created several campaigns that seemed very old. One was about recycling and another used people from the X Factor. Both were no longer fashionable and so the campaigns failed.
Lose idioms
- A lost cause
- Cannot be helped or made better
- Has lost its touch
- No longer successful at doing something
- Lost the Midas touch
- No longer lucky
- Lost their way
- Does not know where it is going
- Have lost track of several markets
- Does not know about certain groups
- Have lost the plot
- To behave and act in a crazy way
- Losing streak
- To be unlucky again and again
- Have lost touch with reality
- Does not know what is happening around it
Discussion Questions
Leave a comment and an SGI teacher will reply to you Which is the biggest problem for M&S? Why do they have these problems? What can the company do now?
