In recent years, the world's FMCG market can be said to be a rapid reshuffle, in such a situation, all FMCG companies are facing huge pressure, just recently the well-known fast fashion brand H&M began to fully switch to the Internet, people can't help but wonder if this kind of online transformation is really useful?
1. H&M settled in Douyin and Pinduoduo
According to a report by Time Weekly, after the offline scale shrunk, the international apparel giant H&M opened up a new route for online e-commerce.
Sweden apparel giant H&M released its financial report for the first three quarters of fiscal 2024 (January 1-August 31, 2024), and officially announced that it officially entered the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo and Douyin, opened an official flagship store, and conducted trial operation. This is not the first time H&M has entered a domestic e-commerce platform. As early as September last year, it has entered JD.com and opened an official flagship store.
On September 26, H&M's official account on Douyin "H&M Official Account" started its first live broadcast. Looking at the data alone, the response has been mediocre.
According to Gray Dolphin data, on the evening of September 26, the account's first live broadcast lasted 4 hours, the number of products on the shelves was 66, the number of viewers was 33,000, and there were 1,557 new fans, but the average stay time was only 42 seconds, and the retention capacity of viewers in the live broadcast room was low, and there was no GMV statistics yet. As of press time, the H&M Douyin account has 65,000 followers.
On the Pinduoduo platform, H&M has launched related products in five categories in the official flagship store: women's, men's, baby and children's, home and sports. As of press time, the store has received 147 orders and more than 200 fans.
From the perspective of subcategories, H&M's SKUs on the two major e-commerce platforms of Douyin and Pinduoduo are roughly the same as those of JD.com's official flagship store, official website, and online mall mini program; In terms of new store discounts, H&M has set up a "discount area" in its Douyin flagship store, while it has directly opened a "National Day Promotion" area in its Pinduoduo flagship store.
2. Can H&M's online transformation be useful?
As a world-renowned fast fashion brand, H&M has faced unprecedented pressure in recent years. With the ever-changing global economic environment and increasingly diverse consumer needs, this long-established FMCG company is going through a transformation from a market leader to a market follower, especially the recent online transformation, what should we think?
First of all, H&M, a world-renowned fashion brand from Sweden, has led a fast fashion trend around the world with its rapidly updated product line and affordable price strategy. However, with changing consumer preferences and an evolving market environment, H&M is facing unprecedented challenges. On the one hand, consumers are paying more and more attention to sustainability and social responsibility, and have put forward higher environmental protection requirements for fast fashion brands. On the other hand, the rise of emerging digitally native brands and local competitors is also squeezing H&M's market share. Coupled with the impact of global economic fluctuations and the impact of the epidemic in recent years, brick-and-mortar retail giants such as H&M have had to re-examine their business models and accelerate the pace of digital transformation.
Secondly, in the context of traditional e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay, which are gradually entering a bottleneck period, H&M keenly captures the potential of emerging platforms. Douyin and Pinduoduo, the fast-rising short-form video and social e-commerce duo in the Chinese market, are attracting a large number of users at an astonishing rate. H&M's entry into the market will not only allow it to leverage the huge user base of these platforms, but also leverage its unique social and content marketing model to reach more potential consumers. This transformation is a smart move by H&M to explore diversified traffic resources to respond to market changes.
Third, in recent years, with the rapid development of China's economy, the national pride of domestic consumers has been increasing, and "national tide" has become a popular trend, and many local brands have won the favor of consumers with their unique cultural elements and design styles. This has put a lot of pressure on foreign brands like H&M. In addition, the improvement of supply chain efficiency and technological advancement have also enabled domestic apparel brands to respond to market demand more quickly and shorten the time cycle from design to shelf, so as to gain an advantage in the competition with international brands. Against this backdrop, if H&M wants to remain competitive in the Chinese market, it needs to be closer to the needs of local consumers, strengthen its localization strategy, and make up for the lack of offline channels through online transformation.
Fourth, for H&M, the presence on Douyin and Pinduoduo is just the first step in its online transformation. After settling in, it faced the problem of how to adapt to the rules of the platform and the characteristics of users. For example, Douyin's short video marketing requires creative content planning, and Pinduoduo's users are more price-sensitive, and H&M needs to adjust its pricing strategy and marketing methods. On Douyin, in order to gain the continuous attention of users, it is necessary to continuously launch short-form video content that is interesting, fashionable and in line with the style of the platform, which is a new challenge for traditional clothing companies like H&M.