H&M Launches New Apparel Brand Arket

Swedish retailer announced a new modern clothing brand with higher prices than in H&M stores.

The Arket brand will enter the market this year with the opening of the flagship store on Regent Street in London. Later the stores will open in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Munich, and new brand clothes can be ordered through online stores in 18 countries. The product range of Arket retail chain will include clothes for women and men apparel, bags, jewelry and accessories, children’s clothing, home and kitchen goods. Also in the stores of the new brand will probably be presented shoes of other brands, men’s shoes from Tricker’s and RM Williams, sneakers from Venga.

Arket prices will be higher than in the stores of H&M, but approximately at the level of the related network COS. In some countries, it is planned to launch the original Arket stores with a cafe with food and drinks, quality products of the “New Northern Cuisine” for a healthy diet.

Arket became the eighth brand in the company’s portfolio: in addition to the key H&M name, the group also owns COS, & Other Stories, Cheap Monday, Monki, Weekday and H&M Home. Work on the creation of the brand took about two years, the amount of investment is not disclosed. In the translation from Swedish, the word Arket means “sheet of paper.”