Weekly sales development of H&M Group worldwide 2020

The weekly sales growth of the fashion retailer H&M in the first half of 2020 was significantly lower than a year prior. The coronavirus pandemic, which emerged early 2020, has had drastic negative effects on businesses around the world. The same can be said for H&M Group, where starting week 12 of 2020, the weekly year-on-year sales growth was minus 65 percent. Beginning week 20, the weekly year-on-year sales growth began to slightly improve. Although by week 22, the sales growth was still at -34 percent compared to the year prior.

Coronavirus impact on the clothing industry

The clothing and retail industry is one of the worst impacted industries due to the coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, production of clothing units in 2020 was down 37.4 percent compared to the year prior. Furthermore, retail sales of clothing were down 43.5 percent in Q2 2020 compared to the same period a year prior. Similar negative trends were observed in other metrics such as turnover from clothing businesses.

Attitudes towards the fashion industry

The coronavirus pandemic has given clothing and fashion consumers time to reflect on the fashion industry’s negative social and environmental impacts. In an April 2020 survey, 83 percent of UK consumers agreed that ‘clothing should be designed to last longer and be repairable’ and that ‘fewer plastics should be used in the production of clothing’. Similarly, consumers in Germany believed that the fashion industry had the responsibility to reduce their negative impact on the environment.