About Hennes & Mauritz Group

H&M Group is a multinational clothing-retail company. Hennes & Mauritz is the second major global apparel retailer and manufacturer after Inditex according to Industry Ranking prepared by Fast Retailing (by 23 October 2020). It was founded in 1947 by a Swedish entrepreneur Erling Persson. The first store was opened in Västerås, Sweden under the name “Hennes”, which means “Hers” in Swedish. Initially, Hennes involved only women’s assortment clothing as it was aimed to reach a female segment of customers. Later on, Erling Persson acquired a retail companyMauritz Widforss, after which point Hennes was renamed to Hennes & Mauritz, and started to sell men’s as well as children’s clothing.

Subsequently, Hennes & Mauritz also launched underwear, accessories and cosmetics lines (H&M Group, 2021).

The year 1974 was a turning point for the company as it was listed on Stockholm Stock Exchange, and as well it transformed its name to a shortened version “H&M”. The company was expanding at a quite fast pace as it begins to open its stores not only in Sweden, but also in the rest of Scandinavian countries. Then, the expansion continued to other European markets, and it even went beyond to North and South America, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Australia continents. Today, H&M Group is operating in 74 markets by 28 February 2021.

USA, China, Germany, UK and France are top 5 largest markets of H&M Group.

Furthermore, in 1998, H&M introduced online shopping through digital channels. The first online store was located in a country of origin of the company, in Sweden. Nevertheless, the amount of online markets has been growing very quickly reaching 53 markets by 28 February 2021. Thus, H&M Group is operating through physical as well as online stores, and the overall amount of its stores accounts for 4.949 by 28 February 2021. Nowadays, H&M Group consists of 8 brands that include H&M, H&M Home, COS, Weekday, Monki,

& Other Stories, ARKET, Afound. The biggest brand according to the number of stores presented is H&M, which involves 4.372 stores by 28 February 2021 (H&M Group, 2021).

Furthermore, H&M Group has around 180.000 employees, and in addition approximately 1.6 million textile workers employed by its suppliers (H&M Group Sustainability Performance Report, 2019).

24 Figure 3: Map of H&M Group stores by region

Source: H&M Group Three-month report (2021), own construction

2.2.1 Its Vision, Strategy and Goals

Vision of H&M Group is “to lead the change towards circular and climate positive fashion while being a fair and equal company” (H&M Group, 2021). H&M Group defines 3 main aspects for working on towards sustainability. They are Leading the Change, Circular

& Climate Positive and Fair & Equal. Each of them assumes certain actions that should be done to achieve sustainability.

1. Leading the Change promotes to be transparent and innovative company. In this way H&M Group believes that it needs to encourage a positive change in fashion industry, and thanks to its scale and size it can become a lead organization for driving innovations. Thereby, it should transfer transparency of business operations and products, strive for creating innovations and as well foster sustainable actions by rewarding (H&M Group, 2021).

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2. Circular & Climate Positive addresses environmental issues and involves actions aimed to reduce negative effect caused by H&M Group to the greatest extent possible. Thereby, this aspect includes such activities as upcycling and recycling, reducing greenhouse emissions, promotion of circularity in value chains, sustainable sourcing of materials and improving animal welfare (H&M Group, 2021).

3. Fair & Equal deals with social issues and takes into account providing H&M Group’s workers with fair living wages, safe and decent working conditions. As well, this aspect assumes respecting and complying with human rights, treating everyone equally, promoting and appreciating diversity as well as inclusion (H&M Group, 2021).

Furthermore, Anna Gedda, previous Head of Sustainability at H&M Group that held this position from 2015 till 2021, highlighted the importance of collaboration with the stakeholders of the company to facilitate a positive change in fashion industry. Involvement of stakeholders is an issue of great importance as a company is not able to act alone and meet today’s challenges. The problems are too big and complicated for one company, and that is why it is significant to combine efforts and work towards a more sustainable future together (H&M Group, 2021). For instance, in order to address the problem of greenhouse emissions it is not enough to interact only with factories. H&M Group also cooperates with governments and regulations to implement a comprehensive approach and move towards green energy. As well, involvement of customers is useful in order to promote a circular economy in fashion industry. Garment collecting is one of the methods to be more sustainable, and customers can be a great help to apply it. As Anna Gedda mentioned, H&M Group collected approximately 29.000 tons of products through collecting initiatives in 2019. In addition, H&M Group has recently begun to publish more detailed information about its products on the websites of some of its brands. It includes such aspects as where the product has been produced (country and factory) and what materials have been used.

Thanks to this system, H&M Group has become a more transparent company, and it as well believes that publishing the background information about products will help its customers to make more sustainable and informed decisions. Also, the website of H&M Group provides a list of its global partnerships, memberships and collaborations that are aimed to seek the solutions for global challenges together. There are mentioned 52 collaborations including above stated Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

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H&M Group also talks publicly about its ambitious goals that are designed to move closer to sustainable fashion industry and build the future it wants to see. They are clear and measurable goals that are set up to the year 2040, and divided into 5 main topics including climate, chemicals, materials, packaging and water (H&M Group, 2021). For instance, one of the goals for 2020 is to collect 25,000 tonnes of garments a year through its collection initiatives, and as it can be already concluded from the previous Head of Sustainability, H&M Group has managed to even exceed the established amount by approximately 4.000 tonnes.

“We want to use our size and scale to lead the change towards circular and climate positive fashion while being a fair and equal company.” - Leyla Ertur, current Head of Sustainability (H&M Group, 2021).