H&M’s sales have surged in the last few months, especially when compared to the sales from last year, as the United States and many other countries begin to reopen their economy and look forward to moving on from the COVID-19 pandemic. On Tuesday, H&M revealed that their sales were up by 62% when compared to last year.
While the clothing retailer has experienced this huge sales surge from March to May of 2021, overall revenue numbers are still below the pre-pandemic levels they had in 2019. As of these latest numbers, sales are down about 19% from where they were in 2019.
H&M isn’t the only clothing retailer that has experienced a huge sales increase in the last few months. As the world’s second-largest fashion retailer, though, they have one of the largest revenues this year. Zara has also reported a surge in sales as they attempt to recover from the pandemic.
Meanwhile, while retail sales in the United States have fallen in the last month (mainly because auto sales have greatly diminished) clothing retailers are the only part of the retail industry that has continued to experience an increase in sales from month to month.
This is likely for a variety of reasons. Firstly, as more Americans and citizens worldwide become fully vaccinated, many restrictions that were put in place on businesses to help curb the virus from spreading are taken away. As a result of these high vaccination levels, people are finally able to go out, meet with friends, go to restaurants, and travel for the first time in over a year.
As many begin to go out and travel, many industries have experienced a huge surge in sales. Clothing retailers and hairstylists have seen a rise in sales. People want to wear new clothes and have new haircuts as the economy and the country reopen.
While clothing retailers pivoted to selling online like never before during the pandemic, a reopening of many fashion stores has obviously helped this sales surge. H&M specifically was forced to shut down about 4,000 of their 5,000 stores worldwide during the beginning of the pandemic last year.
While H&M and others have experienced a good amount of online sales, they still experienced a lower revenue in 2020. Now that many stores have reopened and are thriving in the United States, H&M has experienced a surge that may help them reach pre-pandemic levels sooner, rather than later. Already, H&M has reported that their sales for the beginning of June were up by 35% when compared to last year — and up about 2% from where they were in 2019, before the pandemic.
If retails sales at H&M and at other fashion retailers continue to rise as the economy speedily reopens, these industries could reach pre-pandemic levels much faster than other industries. As this potentially happens, this will only help the overall economic growth for the rest of the summer, as well as for the rest of 2021 and onward as the country works to get out of the pandemic.
