Xinjiang Cotton Incident: H & M'S First Store In Mainland China Officially Closed

On June 28th, xiaohm closed its first store in China, and was once on the top of the microblog search list. H & M's first store in mainland China has been officially closed since June 24. The store is located at 651 Huaihai Middle Road, a traditional commercial street in Shanghai, with a total area of over 3000 square meters; As early as 2006, a large number of consumers queued up at the gate of the store at 6:00 a.m. on the opening day, with a daily turnover of 2 million yuan; In 2013, there was a re installation and upgrade, and many new product launches in the past will also be put in this store.

In response to the closure of H & M's first store in China, H & M customer service said that it was temporarily suspended and was preparing to open normally in other places, and was still in the process of relocation. As for the reasons for the store closure and future adjustments, the H & M Brand side said that it was a silent period before the financial report was released, and there was no response for the time being.

H & M's failure in China: to close Shanghai's heavyweight stores for the second time, withdraw from Macao and cancel 100 branches

This is not the first time H & M has closed its heavyweight stores in Shanghai. In May 2021, H & M closed its stores in the core business district of Nanjing West Road on the ground that the lease expired. The store is close to the three metro lines and was once an important window for H & M to export its brand image.

In addition, H & m also decided to withdraw from the Macao market and open in the Venetian store, the last local store, until June 12, 2022. The store opened in June 2015, which is also the brand's first store in * *.

According to Tianyan information, H & M affiliated company Haines Morris (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Haines Morris business") was established in November 2006 with a registered capital of 5 million euro and wholly owned by H & M Hennes & Mauritz holding Asia Limited. The company has more than 600 branches in China, of which more than 100 have been cancelled. From 2019 to 2021, 18, 22 and 51 branches have been cancelled respectively.

H & M has no future in Chinese market? "Xinjiang cotton incident" is only one of the reasons

It has been more than a year since the fermentation of H & M "Xinjiang cotton event" in March 2021, during which the brand reputation also suffered a lot. On the contrary, the failure of H & M in the Chinese market is caused by public events, but there are many slots in the brand itself.

In terms of product quality, H & M has been widely criticized by netizens and suffered a lot in terms of administrative punishment. After reading xiaohongshu on yingshang.com, it is found that some netizens published notes as early as 2018, saying that the quality of H & M clothes is really like that, and it really feels like the goods on the ground. In January 2022, Chen HM was fined 130000 for shoddy clothes and sunglasses. The topic has also been hot searched on Weibo. According to the national enterprise credit information publicity system, from 2021 to 2022, Haynes Morris business has seven administrative penalty information, the punishment reasons include using unqualified products as qualified products, false publicity and so on.

In terms of fashion design, many netizens complained: "I have basically never bought a suitable dress in H & M. I feel that their clothes are not designed for Asians, only suitable for European and American people." "H & M does not have any good-looking points, the design is very similar, and even the co branded items are my indifferent brands or designers.".

In terms of sales channels, industry insiders pointed out that around 2012, with online shopping becoming more and more common, a large number of garment enterprises that did not transform in time were destroyed. One of the channels that tmall & M didn't keep up with until its opening in 2018 is that it didn't keep up with the changes. Moreover, as online shopping has become an important channel for clothing sales, the excessive number of H & M offline stores has become a pressure.

Looking at the whole industry, fast fashion is being abandoned by young people or the general trend. Gap is considering selling its business in China, and Zara's three sister brands are closing its stores in China In recent years, the news that fast fashion brands are shrinking the layout of China's market is frequent. Moreover, as the main consumers of fast fashion, the post-80s and post-90s, when they enter the society, either upgrade their consumption and choose more high-end brands, or pay more attention to cost performance. However, on these two points, fast fashion brands with no innovation in style and high price without discount are not good choices; As for the post-00s, which have a high degree of acceptance of domestic products and national styles, European and American fast fashion brands themselves have no advantages.

It seems that H & M's closure of the first store in mainland China is helpless, but it is also expected. We don't know where H & M will go in the future in the Chinese market, but we can clearly see that many overseas fast fashion brands, such as H & M, must maintain the advantages of their products, their keen insight into the market and the ability to adapt to the market in a timely manner if they want to stay in China for a long time.