H&M sub-brand locks up the high-end market

People’s enthusiasm for fast fashion is fading, and H&M tries to accelerate the expansion of high-end brands to attract more people. Now H&M has realized that it should not be just a fast fashion company.

Even though sales in the third quarter of 2012 were not satisfactory - net income only rose by 0.9%, which did not affect the company's enthusiasm. In the spring of 2013, its brand new & Other Story will be fully listed. The new brand offers shoes, bags, accessories, beauty products, underwear and ready-to-wear garments at a higher price than H&M.

“We are ready. The goal of the new brand is for women who are interested in fashion and want to have their own personality style.” At the Q3 quarterly press release, H&M Chief Executive Officer Karl-Johan Persson said. Cavill, an adviser to London retail consultancy Planet Retail, thinks of this new brand, “In terms of product lines, H&M is bolder than the high-end Massimo Dutti brand of Inditex (the parent company of ZARA) and they are ready to adopt more exotic designs. ."

This is not the first time the company has tried to get rid of the "cheap" fast fashion label, and it is accelerating the speed of becoming "more expensive".

The establishment of COS is the beginning of H&M's multi-brand strategy. “There is actually a gap between High Street and High-end – there are a group of customers who want both design and high-quality clothing, but at the same time hope that the pricing of these clothes is They can afford it,” said Marie Honda, head of the COS brand. Its goal is to capture those consumers who are more able to spend in the market gap mentioned by Marie Honda – in other words, this is a group of consumers who are pursuing “cost-effectiveness”.

Karl-Johan Persson, chief executive of H&M, placed expectations on this group of consumers. “It turns out that we can do similar experiments and we can do it well. This is good for H&M's development and it will bring profits in the years to come. Of course, COS is a brand new concept, but it has very good prospects for development."

In 2007, H&M was growing at a high rate, and the expansion rate of branches each year was 10% to 15%. In that year, H&M's turnover increased by 15% from the previous year to 92.323 billion Swedish kronor (about 13.884 billion U.S. dollars). Although the European market is still frenzied about fast fashion, the market that has been quickly inspired by fast fashion will soon need some more mature and stable brands to take over. H&M believes that it should be the brand that is closest to their needs.