H&M, The Fast Fashion Giant Of The Cat'S Last Bus, Is There Any Chance?

H&M, which has suffered a double dip in sales and share prices, can pull back a city in the field of e-commerce. Magnus Olsson, general manager of H&M Greater China, shared his views with BoF.

Sweden's fast fashion giant H&M, the world's second largest apparel retailer, finally landed Tmall mall with its main line H&M and H&M H&M. This is the first third party online channel of H&M group in China besides hm.com official website.

Behind the brand new Tmall flagship store, it is difficult to conceal the plight of this fast fashion giant. At present, the overall performance of fast fashion is slowing down. Last year, H&M sales fell by 4% to 58 billion 450 million kronor (about 6 billion 950 million US dollars), far below the group's expectations. The group's share price dropped by about 42% in the past year, while its rival Zara shares fell 17%. Earlier, Bloomberg quoted analysts as saying, "in terms of product popularity, price, distribution channels and so on, I think H&M is not ideal."

It's not hard to understand why H&M is looking to the electricity supplier market. Although investors have been trying to persuade the family business to develop the electricity business as soon as possible, H&M has finally been willing to shift its focus from the entity to the Internet until 2017. H&M expects global electricity supplier sales to grow by 25% in 2018. China is the fifth largest market for H&M, with a turnover of 11 billion kronor (about 1 billion 300 million US dollars). Prior to this, H&M group's brand Monki first entered the Tmall test water, but H&M entered Tmall 9 years later than its competitor UNIQLO, which was 3 to 7 years later than Gap, Mango and Zara.

In explaining why it was late, H&M Olsson Magnus, general manager of Greater China, seemed quite calm. "In general, the whole project is going smoothly, and it is hard to say that this challenge may be completed in such a short time." Olsson said in an exclusive interview the day before Tmall's online launch. At the end of last year, H&M announced its presence in Tmall. In the next few months, it quickly completed the whole channel integration. Online, consumers will be able to find ten thousand single items on H&M's Tmall official website, covering men's wear, women's wear, children's wear and H&M products. This also makes H&M one of the most popular SKU retailers on Tmall.

It was thought that the best H&M of self built electric business is now willing to join Tmall, which is similar to Zara. They found that the operation of the self built electricity supplier was not as good as expected. Tmall as China's largest electricity supplier platform, last year, "double 11" spanactions amounted to 168 billion 269 million yuan. Tmall can still play a powerful role in diversion. At present, H&M stationed in Tmall will open up its own official website and offline retail outlets to complete the whole channel integration. "In the future, our focus will be on how to provide a seamless online and offline retail experience. It is not so much a challenge as opportunity. H&M wants to provide a more convenient and inspiring shopping experience. Olsson said.

H&M, which always appears to be slow and half done, seems to have missed the opportunity to seize the market. But in the case of Tian Yan, chief marketing officer of MTR, a retail consultancy, the speed is relative. "Business at different stages, different brands and different strategies are also normal, perhaps because Nordic brands understand China's environment relatively slowly." Tian Yan told BoF: "though it's a little late, H&M wants to understand it." H&M, of course, needs to find new sources of traffic. The source is online, and the most attractive online shopping mall is Tmall.

Obviously, the on-line Tmall is an important step towards H&M's goal of becoming more popular with the Chinese market. But in the localization strategy, the lack of products and experiences that resonate with Chinese consumers can not achieve real success. "Of course, we also have something to improve, including adjusting product mix for different market segments. In addition, we will develop more products for the Chinese market. " Olsson said.