Mo is the leading lady of M&S’s long-serving lingerie team
Staff at the lingerie department of Marks and Spencer in Shrewsbury have totted up a remarkable 200 years with the high street giant.
And leading the way is long-serving Mo Cowell with 40 years at the Darwin Centre store.
Mum of two Mo, from Bayston Hill, joined the store in Shrewsbury as an 18-year-old: “I had been working in the Co-op and I saw a note on the door and I just called in.
“I had to do a mental arithmetic test and I started and I’ve been here ever since except for a break to have the children.”
When Mo started work in 1966 England had won the World Cup, Harold Wilson was prime minister and Mo was being paid in pounds, shillings and pence.
Most of her time since has been spent in the lingerie department and Mo is expecting to be busy this month with a special promotion on her speciality, bra-fitting: “M&S are very good,” she said: “We are all very well-trained and women realise now how important it is to be properly fitted.
“I enjoy it here. I like the people and it’s a busy department. I like the one-to-one with customers. It allows you to build up a rapport with them and often they ask for you by name which is nice.
“It’s very personal and we build up a relationship with them and we all have our regulars.
“Often you first meet them as young teenagers who come in with their mums and then they come in with their own daughters because we do first time wearers and we are trained to do mastectomies and maternity.”
M&S Manager Martin Woodhouse said: “Mo is a real star in the department and she epitomises the personal care and attention that M&S stands for.
“She was here when I was manager here ten years ago and Shrewsbury is such a great place to work that I’ve spent the last ten years trying to get back here and now that I am I find Mo is still here too.”
Mo, who was fostered when she was young in All Stretton, was taken in by a colleague when she worked at M&S as a teenager: “I stayed with her and was company for her and I lived there until I was married,” she said.
She and husband, Phillip, a former coal merchant, have a son, Nigel and daughter, Faye, who is due to get married this spring.
Lingerie section co-ordinator Jess Leeke, from Harmer Hill, said: “We have 16 staff in the section and 13 of them are trained as bra-fitters but Mo has been here the longest though we have others who have been here for more than 20 years.
“Altogether we have more than 200 years service which is a pretty remarkable amount.
“We are very busy here and we’re expecting plenty of customers with our special offers and the fact that you don’t need to make an appointment, you can just call in.”
