Sweden H&M Group plans to open a new high fashion chain store in London Regent Street in next spring. Different from the flagship store in Sweden, the new one will be higher grade with higher prices in order to attract higher levels of customers. There are still about nine similar stores which will be on the testing operation in Europe, including in Germany Berlin and Hamburg, Brussels in Belgium and Hague of Netherlands.
Over the past few years, the market is flooded with cheap clothing, especially with the quality development of supermarket clothing, the decline in prices and the rise in the level of practical, the competition of low-priced clothing market is increasingly fierce. Having opened its stores in 24 countries, H&M s average sales growth was only 2% in the first 10 months of 2006. Compared with its Spanish rival Inditax, H&M has lost a lot of market share, while Inditax just benefits from the development of multi-level stores to attract more customers.
