mooncat:
I'm not surprised, their NET profit last year was just over 5m, on £81m turnover, thats an appaling (IMO) 6.17%. The 'standard' markup on clothing is in excess of 50%, they aren't operating efficiently enough to offer decent discount codes!
If you look their revenue and gross profit it's 165M to 71M so very close to your 50% "markup". (Year 2008/2009)
Operating profit is very different to markup. They made 13M from the 165M revenue. That's ok compared to my sector of construction that often operates as low as 3%
Considering retail had a terrible second half year they haven't done too badly at all.