H&M’s online sales increased 30 per cent in 2019 thanks to a strategy of integrating online and in-store experiences. Over the past couple of years, the fashion retailer has been slowing down its physical store expansion strategy. Profit has been negatively affected by a weak sales development in the physical stores of the H&M brand. H&M has a physical store presence in 71 markets worldwide, but it only sells online in 47 of those, four of which were added in 2018. This suggests that improving its online presence has been a real focus for H&M. The threat from rival retailers, both online and offline, is partly responsible for H&M’s change of strategy. Over the last ten to fifteen years H&M and other fast-fashion brands have enjoyed great success in the fashion sector thanks to trend-led products, a speedy production process and large store networks. Now, the disruption is happening online, and H&M has been relatively slow to adapt.

Mobile is especially important, as H&M’s target market of under 25s are heavy mobile users. H&M only started selling online in 2010. Apparently the retailer was slow to see the opportunity that e-commerce presented, or else thought that its store network was enough to see off online competition.