Global Enterprise

Abstract

In the following article we will look into two international companies – H&M and Marks and Spencer. We are going to compare their business models and the management strategy to fit the requirement and need of today’s clothing retail.

Introduction

H&M (Hennes & Mauritz)

The first Hennes store was established in in Västerås, Sweden by Erling Persson in 1947, which Hennes (Swedish for “hers” only sold women’s clothing at that time. In 1968, Persson had purchased a hunting store in Stockholm which is a menswear store. This lead Persson expanded his business into menswear market. So the company started to sell women’s and men’s clothing and changed its name to Hennes and Mauritz, later abbreviated to H&M.
Today H&M has around 2,200 stores operates in 40 countries and 87,000 employees. H&M is known for its “fast fashion”, they offered clothes, accessories, nightwear and underwear to women, men, teenagers and children.
H&M target customer is the group of fashionable and trendy consumers who enjoy shopping, like high fashion and quality clothing at low price. Their message and philosophy is “to bring you fashion and quality at the best price”. To make this possible H&M has a design and purchasing department, which makes all the clothing collections. New clothes and accessories arrive to H&M’s stores almost every day. H&M is able to move a garment from design to the hanger in just 20 days. The business model employed by H&M is "markup based". So that they don’t own any factories, but outsource all production. However, H&M remains high control of all the outsourced production phases. H&M coordinates with around 700 independent suppliers, primarily in Asia and Europe.

M&S (Marks & Spencer)
Marks & Spencer was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. They owned over 600 stores in the United Kingdom and over 300 stores spread across more than 40 countries. They employ...