H&M Misses Out on Holiday Cheer

While retailers across the U.S. and much of Europe celebrate their best holiday season in years, fast-fashion pioneer H&M isn’t sharing in the good cheer. With rivals such as Zara and Primark luring shoppers away, the Stockholm-based chain on Dec. 15 reported its biggest quarterly sales drop in at least a decade. Stock in the company, Hennes & Mauritz AB, has plunged nearly 15 percent since the announcement, wiping out almost $6 billion in market value.

The debacle prompted a rare mea culpa from the family-run group. “We have made mistakes,” Chief Executive Officer Karl-Johan Persson, 42, a grandson of H&M’s founder, told Swedish news agency Direkt. H&M will “work incredibly hard to turn this around” by closing underperforming outlets and revamping many of those that remain.