After creating both my Shop report and my competitor analysis on H&M I also looked into their SWOT- Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
Strengths- I would say H&M’s strengths include a very strong celebrity collaboration. Both collaborating with famous designers and well as using unrelated celebrities to advertise their clothing. Their design collaborations include names like Karl Lagerfeld, Roberto Cavalli and Versace. There celebrity collaboration include Madonna,David Beckham and Beyoncé. This is a very useful strength as these big names create worldwide advertising for H&M establish them further.
Weaknesses- One of H&M’s strengths I feel can also be seen as a weakness, H&M have created a conscious collection, an ethical and sustainable range. Whilst this is good, as it shows they are thinking about the earth, global warming and their workers, the collection itself is very plain. It mainly consists of plain jersey or cotton vests, t-shirts and trousers, with the occasional simplistic print. I think this is a weakness that H&M could defiantly build upon and an area that has room for much improvement.
Opportunities- As I have previously stated as a weakness in H&M’s business- their plain and simple Conscious range. I think they have a opportunity to really explore their conscious range, make the ethical and sustainable collection more interesting and more eye catching, which means it would become more profitable and therefore they can explore and develop the range more and perhaps help and inspire others to do the same.
Threats- Threats to H&M would be other brands and shops having a more interactive and stronger shopping experience. H&M’S shopping experience is solid however I think that other brands and businesses that are direct competitors with H&M have a strong more graspable interactive presence. For example Pull & Bear, Urban Outfitters and Toshop all have interactive items in their stores such as iPads to make finding items easier and photo booths so you can have a keep sake after you have visited their shop. You then have the choice to post the photo on social media, this scheme creates free advertising for the business/company as well as something that makes their customer and consumer happy and creates a higher incentive of them coming back to their store. This I believe is a threat to H&M and something they should look into and explore.
