“Customers come to the store to experience our stores”

What place does physical retail occupy in H&M’s brand experience strategy?

The H&M brand experience department was born in September 2024. Its objective is to bring together digital and physical to offer an omnichannel journey to our customers.

H&M is a brand with a long history in retail. We have therefore developed strong expertise in the field, long before launching into e-commerce. With the explosion of online commerce, we had to rethink the in-store experience to meet the expectations of customers, who no longer buy in the same way. So, we thought about how to elevate the product on the shelf through the layout of the offer, so that the consumer finds himself in our offer and the brand’s DNA is clear when he walks through the doors of any store. which of our points of sale.

How does omnichannel translate into your strategy?

When it comes to omnichannel, our main challenge is that of facilitation. We seek to provide a seamless journey for our customers. They are increasingly entering our stores with their smartphone in hand and want to be able to buy products they have found online. The role of the physical point of sale is therefore to support the customer in their choices and to make them feel the experience of our brand. In itself, if the consumer only wanted to buy a part, he would do it online. If he visits the store, it is to experience our stores and benefit from the experience and services we offer.

To respond to this challenge, are you planning an overhaul of your store network or the opening of new points of sale?

As the store is central to our business model, we are investing heavily to renovate our stock and improve our physical services. But it is also important that we are present where the customers are, so opening new points of sale is not excluded.

What place do pop-up stores occupy in your physical location strategy?

Since the start of the 2024 school year, we have opened three pop-up stores, in New York, Paris and Stockholm. The objective of these pop-up points of sale is to bring us closer to customers and offer them a new opportunity to experience our brand.

As for the locations, we chose iconic and important cities in the history of the brand, but above all neighborhoods where H&M stores are rare. The idea is to recruit new customers through these activations.

When it comes to consumer experience and needs, do all countries have the same needs? Are there differences between markets?

Within the 74 markets where H&M operates, there are of course differences in trends and ways of operating. For example, for countries south of the equator we are currently preparing the summer collection. More generally, the various climates, from the Swedish cold to the Australian heat, force us to adapt to the needs of our customers around the world, while standardizing our omnichannel strategy.

In your strategy to renew the H&M brand experience, you integrate second hand, how does this translate?

After its online rollout, we launched the “Preloved” program in select stores. To develop second-hand goods, we invested in the company Sellpy, which specializes in collecting second-hand clothing.

This initiative in physical stores materializes in the store that we recently opened in Stockholm, but also in the points of sale on Regent Street in London and Soho in New York.

The idea is to offer a second-hand offer in numerous physical points of sale, to meet the growing demand for circular economy and affordable clothing from our customers.

Despite your work on eco-responsibility, do you plan to maintain your accessible brand positioning?

For us, eco-responsibility and accessibility go hand in hand and it is fundamental to offer both to our customers. Our DNA is based on four pillars: being at the forefront of fashion, selling quality products, being accessible and working towards eco-responsibility. We invest to ensure all these points. We do not want to focus on one pillar to the detriment of another.