H&M. Constantly Innovating.

H+M are a poster child for omnichannel retail and constant innovation. The Swedish business wrapped up 2018 with a series of tests to close the gap between online and offline sales, and to improve customer experiences in both their physical and digital spaces.

Updated key stores include features such as selected external brands, café concept It’s Pleat, a florist shop-in-shop, self-service checkouts, monogramming services and repairing services as well as an inspiring digital wall where customers share their H&M favourites under #HMxME.

Edge case innovations include AR, innovative voice services upon the Alexa platform, funding of closed loop sustainability programmes, trialling sales on Alibaba, and sizeable investment in payment technology businesses like Klarna.

Beyond their core business, other also group businesses are exploring investing in omnichannel innovation — including uses of data to power their product lines from Afound — who are using data from both online and offline sales to figure out what other products customers may want stocked in-store, and Monki who have partnered up with HoloMe to explore a unique creation of high definition human holograms in Augmented Reality.

Their omnichannel strategy and constant innovation is paying off: H&M has reported a 10 per cent increase in group net sales, which chief executive Karl-Johan Persson attributes to the group’s “ongoing transformation work” and hailed progress in combining online and offline sales channels.