Gucci Selling With H&M? Maybe Hiding The New Way Of Fast Fashion.

Imagine having such a discount shop: you can buy 10 percent off Gucci handbags in it, you can buy 20 percent off Prada purses, and 30 percent off Louis Vuitton medium handbags.

But you can also buy a 60 percent off H&M coat.

Would such a combination be a little strange?

H&M group's two AFound shops are such a multi brand discount shop with a wonderful combination.

AFound also has its own website, which sells discounted discount products online and offline.

The AFound project was launched by H&M group in January this year, and officially opened in June.

At present, two shops in AFound are located in Sweden, the home of H&M group. One is in Stockholm and the other is in Malmo, a southern Swedish city.

At present, the website only provides Swedish services, and can not complete the operation in English to purchase.

Behind the launch of the AFound project is the recent sluggish sales performance of H&M group.

In the first half of 2018, according to H&M's earnings report, the group's operating profit dropped by 33% to 7 billion 215 million kronor (about 800 million US dollars) in the first half of the year, and sales were basically the same as that of the same period last year, and the operating profit rate decreased by 3.7% compared with the same period last year.

Undesirable performance has led the H&M group to start thinking about other ways, instead of putting eggs in the H&M brand basket.

Vigorously developing &Other Stories and COS H&M group's brand which was not so valued in the past is one way out. In March this year, the new brand Arket also opened a new store.

AFound shop is not only a brand of H&M group, but also a lot of other large brands that have been carefully selected by the group, where consumers can have more choices and the chances of buying goods will increase.

Another idea of H&M group is to clean up a large number of stocks under the group's brand backlog. After all, high inventory has been a major problem restricting fast fashion brands.

The fashion media The Fashion Law suggested in a paper that it seems that some mixed up AFound is a big attempt by H&M group to clean up inventory.

Here, consumers may be attracted by cheap top brands in stores, and those discounted Gucci and Prada will still be expensive even if there are some concessions. This time consumers will notice that there are so many cheap clothes of H&M and Arket, and their prices are too friendly compared with luxury brands.

The ambition of H&M group is not only there.

H&M group's official website's positioning of the AFound project is: a multi brand market with style and many concessions. AFound will collect their favorite brand products from all over the world and offer discounts.

H&M group wants to turn AFound into a regular discount retailer. The same type of T.J. Maxx department is a leader in the strong growth of the retail department store industry. It relies on selling new discount products instead of selling the old discount items a few years ago.

In the recent global economic downturn, people are happy to buy goods that are not yet out of date, but H&M group wants to have a share.

There are many players in the US discount retailer market. T.J. Maxx and Target have already seized many markets.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the European discount retailer market still has great potential for development.

AFound landed in Sweden in June this year, marking the potential discount retailer market in Europe.

According to fashion media Fashion United, in August this year, AFound put on a number of French fashion boutiques Colette clothes, especially Colette was closed in December last year, so fans who want to buy the last batch of Colette can only buy them in AFound, before mentioning they are willing to go to Sweden.

AFound shops are only opened in Sweden, and the website is currently providing Swedish services only for Swedish domestic consumers.

H&M group has not announced the possible global expansion plan after AFound. Perhaps there will be positive feedback from Sweden's two stores and online stores, and H&M group will expand the discount store.