display

Stockholm (AP) - The Swedish fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) has responded to the ongoing boycott problems in the People's Republic with a commitment to the Chinese market.

The company announced in Stockholm on Wednesday that it is working with colleagues in China to overcome the current challenges and find a way forward.

"China is a very important market for us and our long-term commitment to the country remains strong."

The company underlined that it has been active in the country for more than 30 years and has observed remarkable progress within the Chinese textile industry.

H&M strives to regain the trust of consumers, colleagues and business partners in China.

display

The company announced last year that it no longer wanted to purchase cotton from the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Previously there had been reports that the Muslim Uyghur minority was doing forced labor there.

At that time, there was initially no stronger reaction from Beijing.

After the EU imposed sanctions against China for human rights violations for the first time in over 30 years at the beginning of last week, H&M, like other fashion and sports brands in China, has come under massive criticism.

Chinese consumers would "vote with their feet and boycott unruly companies," it said a few days ago on the state broadcaster CCTV.

There are also often shared calls for boycotts against the company on social networks.

H&M products could no longer be found on several large online shopping platforms.

A number of Chinese stars publicly terminated their cooperation with Western corporations.

display

H&M did not go into the boycott problems in its quarterly report, which was also published on Wednesday.

In the first quarter of 2021, which runs from December to February, the group slipped into the red due to the corona-related forced closings of its stores.

With around 1800 stores, more than a third of all branches of the group were temporarily closed, the Swedes said.

The bottom line was that H&M posted a loss of 1.07 billion Swedish kronor in the quarter (around 105 million euros).

In the same quarter a year earlier, the group had made a profit of 1.9 billion crowns.

As already known, the H&M store closings at the start of the financial year resulted in a decline in sales of more than a quarter to almost 40.1 billion crowns.

As the report shows, China was the third largest H&M market in terms of net sales in the period before the boycott, after the US and Germany.

A year ago, the People's Republic was still in sixth place behind Great Britain, France and Sweden.

In contrast to the other major markets, sales in China did not drop significantly compared to the same quarter of the previous year, but increased by a double-digit percentage.

display

After all, there was a ray of hope for H&M in March compared to the period of the previous year, which was particularly badly shaped by the lockdown: From the beginning of the month to March 28, sales in local currencies rose by 55 percent, the company said.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210331-99-39752 / 2

H&M quarterly report

Statement on China