Dive Brief:
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Stockholm-based H&M Group is expanding its Cos (“Collection of Style) line with 27 new stores globally, including in the U.S. in Boston, New York, Costa Mesa, CA, and Houston, TX. The brand has a store in Los Angeles and another in New York. This is the brand's biggest expansion yet.
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The brand launched in 2007 with a more minimalist aesthetic and slightly higher prices than the company’s fast-fashion flagship.
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From 2009 to 2014, Cos has boosted its share of the company’s revenue from 1% to 3%, from $132 million to $625 million in sales.
Dive Insight:
Conventional wisdom has it that apparel retailers are struggling in the U.S. because of the great force of fast fashion, which moves items in and out of stores quickly at extremely low prices. That’s H&M’s approach — shoppers never get bored (or if they do, not for long. The next collection is on the heels of the last one).
But the company’s Cos takes a different approach —creating two collections each year and taking more than a year to develop each one. Merchandise is less varied, inventory is leaner, and prices are higher. There’s an expectation that what is bought at Cos will remain in the closet for a while, in contrast to fast fashion’s “disposable clothing” approach.
Cos is hardly going to replace H&M stores; younger consumers are still likely to flock to those lower priced, higher turnover stores. But it’s proving that there’s more than one way to succeed in apparel retail, something Gap, which also theoretically moves in this space, has been struggling to do for several quarters now.
“They [H&M Group] really found the missing link and the gap in the market for a brand like Cos,” Marie Honda, managing director of Cos, told Business of Fashion. “The approach that we have, to have design quality for an affordable price was something that was missing."
