When I see some advertising about H&M’s implantation in Japan at the beginning of September; I did not know that H&M was absent, until today, in the Japanese « fashion market ». H&M is a Swedish group of fashionable clothes for men, women and child; in addition to that, the wears that H&M sell have an advantage: the price. Indeed, prices are cheaper than other brands, especially when the selling point is Ginza where there are so many luxury shops (as Channel, Louis Vuitton, Dior etc). Ginza is compared to the 5th avenue in United States or the Champs Elysées in Paris.So, we saw that H&M was implanted in famous places as Shibuya, Harajuku, some districts for young people in fashionable trend.
The market of trend clothes in Japan is very competitive and some companies have to create constantly news trends, new styles and something different in each case in order to attract customers. Japanese people, especially young girls, pay a lot of attention to their appearance. We can see that when they look for news trends and when they try to mix some styles. All this also concern fashion accessories as scarves, slings, necklaces, hats, accessories for hair and so on. That is to say those Japanese consumers take care about the details of their clothes.
I read in a website about Japan way of life that people have a high purchasing power. Because people in Japan get married late (about 29 years old for women for example). So they do not have a lot of expenses given their parents are there for food, rent and so on.
Here are some figures about Japanese people’s expenses of clothing:
Source : The Japan Textiles Importer Association, ICEX
In this market, we can see that goods consumption for women are important and have a non negligible part of the market. When I walk in Tokyo during weekdays or weekend, a big part of the men are dressed in version “salary man”. Contrary to them, many of the women are dressed fashion or in a particular style. Namely, in famous cities as Shibuya near the building 109, this is the most famous fashion shop, in Shinjuku or in Ginza as H&M. Japanese consumers can do everything for discovering news trends, even to queue during hours:
A video of consumers who queue for H&M :
http://fr.tinypic.com/player.php?v=23ixdgj&s=4
And these images are taken in Shibuya; it is an announce about the opening of H&M store (13th on September):
Source: personal photo
Source: personal photo
Source: personal photo
Maybe the main advertising about H&M opening store is stetting at Shibuya due to the fact that this district is very frequented and very renowned with the young people. The ads are omnipresent in the district. I only saw one another type of advertising about H&M's opening: free magazine distributed in the street.
