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H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ)
H&M sells affordable clothes, accessories, shoes, cosmetics, and home textiles for men, women, and kids through its own stores and online.
H&M is one of the world's biggest fashion retailers, selling cheap and trendy clothing for men, women, and kids, plus accessories, shoes, cosmetics, and home textiles. If you've ever walked through a mall and seen a big store with racks of $10 T-shirts and $30 jeans, that's the core of the business: fast fashion, meaning new styles hit the floor quickly and get replaced just as quickly, so shoppers keep coming back to see what's new.
The company makes money mostly by selling its own-brand clothes through thousands of stores it owns or leases, and increasingly through its website and apps. It designs the clothes itself, sources production from a long list of suppliers (mostly in Asia), and keeps prices low by ordering in huge volumes. Customers choose it because it's affordable and convenient, though it faces stiff competition from Inditex (the Spanish owner of Zara), Primark (Associated British Foods' budget chain), and online players like Shein and Amazon. H&M's real edge is scale and speed. Because it sells so much, it can negotiate hard with suppliers and keep costs down. But that same scale makes it vulnerable: when shoppers shift online or toward ultra-cheap rivals, or when the weather ruins a season's sales, lots of unsold inventory piles up. The company has been investing heavily in its online store and in a newer, more expensive brand called Arket and a higher-end label, COS, to reach customers who want to spend more than H&M's usual prices. One surprising thing about H&M is how much of its growth now comes from online sales, which were a small piece of the business a decade ago. The company also owns a lot of its own real estate, which is unusual for a retailer — it gives it control over locations but ties up cash. And it pays a regular dividend to shareholders while also spending money to open new stores and upgrade its technology.
The biggest open question is whether H&M can keep its prices low while its costs rise, and whether it can win back shoppers who've drifted to faster online rivals. That's the heart of the business: a giant, efficient clothing machine that lives or dies on staying cheap and staying in fashion.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026