Less than a year after opening its flagship store in Beijing’s The Place comes the grim news from Marks & Sparks’ UK headquarters that a good chunk of the iconic British brand’s international stores are to be shuttered – including, it seems, all 10 in China.

In a statement outlining their half year results dated Nov 8, M&S tells a tale of a brand that is slowly losing favor in its traditonal fashion segment and taking a bath internationally. However, its food segments – the ones we’ve been most excited about here in Beijing from the start – are going gangbusters.

A fixture in Shanghai since 2008 and in Hong Kong since 1988, the nearly 100-year-old British retailer is a known quantity among many UK-centric shoppers and sells high quality women’s wear, lingerie, and menswear, but also British comestibles such as shortbread cookies, Christmas puddings, lemon curd, curry crisps, jarred chutney, and other sauces.

 “We are proposing to close all of our 53 wholly-owned stores in these ten markets, including ten in China and seven in France, as well as all of our stores in Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Slovakia,” a statement posted to the M&S corporate website stated.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the shop in Beijing will close overnight – in fact, the statement speaks of exiting international stores over the next 12 months in an orderly manner and according to local labor policies The statement even leaves a light at the end of the tunnel that the stores could potentially remain open as franchises.

International franchises and stores in Hong Kong, Ireland and the Czech Republic will remain open, the stament also mentioned.

Reached late afternoon UK time, M&S’s corporate PR did not respond with comment.

While new to Beijing, M&S has been in Shanghai since 2008 but began pulling back last year. The announcment a year ago last spring about the launch of the Beijing store was made at the same time as the number of stores in Shanghai was basically halved.

The Beijing store currently shows no sign of winding things down. A recent visit saw plenty of Advent Calendars for sale and the store beginning to get dolled up for Chirstmas. Nevertheless, we recommend that to be on the safe side, yuletide shoppers should stock up early.

Even if brick-and-mortar stores were to close in China, it’s likely that the brand’s online presence will remain. M&S maintains robust ecommerce platorms both on JD.com (fashion) and TMall (kidswear)

Speaking of big Beijing launches in The Place that have since fizzled, Max Brenner The Chocolate Bar, which like M&S opened less than a year ago (more like six months ago) and only a few doors down, has been mysteriously shuttered for two weeks, with nary a hastily pasted “under renovation” note in its window. The interior looks frozen in time with all fittings still in place, and even a shallow vat of perpetually spinning white chocolate slowly scabbing up just inside its doors.