LONDON — High-street brands are raising the bar on physical retail as customers fall back in love with in-store shopping, with H&M the latest to polish up its offering.
On Thursday, H&M opened a new concept store at 72 King’s Road in Chelsea with a “handpicked curation” of its most luxurious and fashion-forward designs.
There is also ample space given to the H&M beauty offer. Staff are on hand to offer styling tips and there is a click and collect service as well.
Inside the new H&M store on King’s Road in London’s Chelsea.
The store is located in a Grade II listed building, and spans three floors, with interiors by the H&M in-house creative team.
“The store embodies our ethos of fashion for the many, providing contemporary design that aims to empower and inspire,” said Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M’s head of design.
The store opened with the spring collection, which includes soft tailoring, sculptural volume and denim pieces.
The concept is part of wider strategies by H&M Group, and its competitors Inditex and Mango, to create luxury, service-driven shopping experiences for customers, no matter how much they spend.
Arket, which is also owned by H&M Group, opened its first shop-in-shop, at Selfridges Oxford Street, last year. The concession stocks a selection of womenswear and lifestyle merchandise, and is meant to complement the retailer’s stand-alone stores in the U.K.
Beauty takes center stage at the new H&M store on King’s Road in London’s Chelsea.
At the time, Arket’s head of design and creative, Ella Soccorsi, said the brand’s stores were becoming “more of an experience space, and we really want customers to feel at ease and spend time once they come in.”
In 2022, Zara opened what was then its most advanced retail concept at the Battersea Power Station development.
The store, housed in a Frank Gehry building, features the latest technology innovations from Zara’s integrated online and physical store platform, and looks more like a luxury department store than the average Zara outpost, with airy interiors, lots of blond and natural wood and a spacious shop floor.
Also in 2022, the Spanish retailer Mango opened a vast Fifth Avenue flagship, and installed a tailoring station for menswear.
That same year, Mango reopened its 15,000-square-foot store on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris with its “New Med” concept of bright white walls, terrazzo treatments and wood floors, meant to evoke a seaside villa. The brand also built a giant wave-like installation of Esparto, a grass weaving technique native to the coastal city of Alicante.