CASE STUDY

Hennes & Mauritz, the leading Swedish clothing retailer and Sweden’s third biggest company, is attempting to become a world scale organisation. Expansion has already been successful in Europe, with 1010 of its 1134 stores located in 22 countries other than Sweden. The first steps to Internationalisation were taken in 1976 when a UK store was opened, followed by entry to Germany in 1980. Germany has been an especially successful market, becoming H&M’s most important market in 1995.

Although H&M’s share of the German market is small, the low-priced, well-designed, value-for-money fashion lines are nevertheless popular and a store expansion programme is still underway. Sales outside Sweden generate 90% of turnover and that figure is likely to rise as more stores are added. In 2005, around 150 new stores were opened, mainly in Germany, France, Spain, Poland Italy and the USA, all following the same retail format. H&M normally opens its first store in a country in the largest population centre and then expands out to smaller centres. (http://www.hm.com)

Some fashion retailers such as H&M and Zara attempt to achieve a competitive advantage by cutting the lead times involved in getting garments from the drawing board to the retail outlets. Some pioneers of this so called ‘fast fashion’ can get lead time down to as little as 14 days. This can be achieved through a high degree of vertical integration and the adoption of relationship marketing principles within the sourcing, design, production and distribution process. (One of Zara’s sister companies produces 40% of its fabric needs and between 50% and 60% of its manufacturing is done in house). Fabric can be held in stock and then cut and dyed at the last minute to suit a fresh design. For a company producing some 11,000 new products per year (competing companies such as H&M and Gap produce up