Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), a Swedish clothing store, saw a 40% rise in sales in the year ending in March 2023. It was able to keep its spot as India’s biggest fast fashion brand by making more money by lowering prices.
But the growth in sales was less than 49% a year ago, which shows that customers are moving their money to competitors like Uniqlo and Zara. Based on its most recent report with the Registrar of Companies, H&M made 2,960 crore sales in 2022–23, up from 2,115 crore the previous year. During the year, net profit increased by 72% to 43.6 crore.
During the fiscal year, H&M’s online sales topped 1,000 crores, making it one of the biggest clothing names to sell clothes online. Its ecommerce business brought in 1,178 crores, or about 40% of its total sales. In its most recent annual report, H&M said that a new supply center for online sales opened in New Delhi at the start of the year.
As part of its one-time designs, H&M works with designers to make fast fashion items that are sold in-store. It keeps many basic, everyday things in stock from places like India and Bangladesh, where the prices are lower than most of its competitors.
Inditex’s joint venture with Tata, which runs 20 Zara shops in India, made Rs. 2,562.5 crore, 40% more than H&M’s sales last fiscal year. However, it’s six times more profitable than H&M.
Zara and H&M have had massive hits in India since they first came there, but Zara’s success has slowed down because the company is slowly opening more stores. Since it opened in India in October 2015, H&M, based in Stockholm, has opened an average of one monthly store. However, it only opened five stores last fiscal year, its slowest growth ever.
A report from the Retailers Association of India (RAI) says that sales in organized retail rose 34% in FY23 compared to FY20, the year before the pandemic. This was primarily due to fast food restaurants, sporting goods, and electronics.
India is a good market for clothing brands because, increasingly, young people are wearing clothes that look like they came from the West. Functional basics like T-shirts and jeans are becoming popular at companies like Levi’s, Uniqlo, and Celio. This differs from fast-fashion competitors, whose designs quickly go from the runway to the store.
This month, Michelle Gass, president of Levi Strauss & Co., said that India is now the biggest market in Asia for jeans made in San Francisco and the sixth most significant market in the world overall.
