In March this year, H&M made some wrong moves as an “outstanding player” and was strongly boycotted by Chinese consumers. Now nearly six months have passed, H&M seems to be very nostalgic for the Chinese market and is preparing to use “cross-dressing” to re-enter the Chinese market.
According to media reports on Thursday (September 23), H&M plans to implement a new plan to introduce some new brands to form new stores Arket and & Other Stories to expand The company has a large share of the Chinese market and will first test the waters in Beijing and Shanghai. According to market analysis, this is just a “little trick” used by H&M. Although it is a new store, it is still H&M behind it. Many uninformed consumers will regard it as a new brand for consumption.
You must know that since making the wrong move, H&M has been labeled a “double-sided enterprise”. Si’s online products were relegated to the “outside” and were removed from the shelves by large e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com. In addition, life is not easy for the company’s offline stores. More than 10 stores have been closed, and the stores that are still open are also very deserted. They can only rely on crazy discounts to attract consumers.
What’s worse is that in the second quarter of this year, H&M’s sales in the Chinese market fell sharply by 28%, losing US$74 million (equivalent to about 470 million yuan), and the Chinese market also The company was relegated from the third largest overseas market to the sixth largest market.
On the other hand, my country’s national sportswear companies are sought after by Chinese consumers. Statistics show that from January to June this year, the net profit of domestic sportswear brands reached 1.96 billion yuan. A year-on-year surge of 187%.
In fact, the Arket and & Other Stories that H&M plans to launch are not new brands. The markets that these two brands focus on are different from the hypermarkets that H&M is directly targeting. Targeting the mid-to-high-end market.
ARKET, which is about to open in Sanlitun, Beijing, is a brand launched by H&M Group in 2017. It is positioned as a Nordic fashion lifestyle integrating men’s clothing, women’s clothing, children’s clothing and home furnishing series. Collection store. Currently, ARKET has opened a total of 21 stores around the world. In addition to selling clothes, shoes and hats, it also sells food, perfume, beauty products and functional household items. Some stores have cafés where customers can enjoy Nordic cuisine and freshly brewed coffee.
Picture source: ARKET official website
& Other Stories, another store that is about to open its first store in China in Shanghai, was founded in 2013 and specializes in women’s clothing products. At first, it only sold cosmetics, and then gradually added product lines such as women’s clothing, shoes, bags, and jewelry accessories.
As the two latest sub-brands independently operated by the H&M Group, ARKET and & Other Stories are positioned on the mid-to-high-end line. Compared with the rough texture of H&M clothes, they pay more attention to the quality and details of the clothes, and the pricing is obviously higher. A white shirt with a similar style sells for less than 200 yuan in H&M stores, while it costs around 600 yuan in ARKET and & Other Stories.
A white shirt with a similar style is sold at H&M (above), ARKET (below left) and & Other Stories ( Pictured below right), the selling prices vary quite a bit.
There are currently 21 Arket stores around the world. Other Stories and ARKET opened Tmall official flagship stores in August 2019 and April 2020 respectively, each attracting more than 1.01 million customers. and 256,000 followers. Among them, the canvas bag is the best-selling one in the ARKET store, with monthly sales exceeding 300 pieces.
I believe that H&M also decided to shift its focus from hypermarkets to the mid-to-high-end market after seeing the preference of test sales data. However, according to market analysis, Chinese people still have resistance to H&M. If consumers know that the “big boss” behind these two brands is H&M, will they still pay for it? </p
