Sustainability is key for fashion brands to win millennial customers’ hearts

Fast fashion is facing downtrend in international market, but many brands are expanding businesses in Southeast Asia. What is your comment?

We don’t like the label fast fashion. We absolutely do not encourage this kind of throw-away mentality that comes together with fast fashion. We want to be a sustainable choice of customers and we are working very hard to be at the forefront.

We are really having low prices, but we also have good quality and we really make sure our garments are produced in a sustainable way. So we don’t like the fast fashion label.

In Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general, we see a lot of potential, because this is the fastest growing part of the world. We have been in Germany since 1947, but we have only 500 stores.

Sweden with 9 million people, we have 180 stores there. So of course, the growth potential in East Asia is good. The growth is expected to continue in the coming 10 to 15 years. Southeast Asia and Vietnam is interesting for us.

How do you apply sustainability for expanding market in this fastest growing part of the world?

This is a super important point. I mean sustainability.

We focus on fashion, quality, price, and sustainability. We believe sustainability is super important for the future. Sustainability has so many aspects but we want our customers to look good, but also to feel good about what they are wearing. Sustainability comes from the feel good.

We want our customer to feel assured when they buy something from H&M. The garment has been produced by suppliers having safe working condition for their workers. We have to make sure those worker enjoy fair wage.

Today, approximately 60% of the materials that we use for producing our garments are coming from sustainable sources. We have to make sure that our garment produced in sustainable way. So our customers can feel comfortable about what they are wearing.

Sustainability is becoming more and more important, especially in the younger generation. I think the younger shoppers are really looking at this as one of the most important aspects that they want to feel comfortable when wearing our clothes.

By 2020, a hundred percent of the cotton that we use in our garment should come from sustainable sources. By 2030, all of materials we use in our clothes should come from more sustainable sources. 

We want to have more sustainable materials like sustainable cotton. We really want to recycle garment. We are collecting garment and what we do with this garment is use is as second hand clothes or it can be recycled and me new yarns for our new clothes to create our new collection. Inside our stores, up to 20% of material is recycled.

Why only 20%? Because recycled fibers as not strong as others. If we make 100% clothes with recycled fibers, clothes could break easily. With current technology that we have, we can only put only 20% in a garment and we don’t have it in the whole collection yet.

Customers look at clothes displayed at H&M new store in Da Nang. Photo by Dat

How do you think about fierce competition between international brands in Vietnam?

We are very happy when they are coming to Vietnam. We are happy to have them our international competitors in the shopping mall. I think this is win – win situation. More customers come to the shopping malls, there will be even wide source of customers for us.

Everyone will benefit with more and more customers and more things happening in the different shopping malls. So I must say this will be positive when other brands are coming.

There are many brands out there with good different things. There are certain brands leading with quality. We are good at quality, but they might not really good at prices. They might not good at fashion or they might not really good at sustainability.

We have been in Vietnam for two years, so we understand this market very well. We are adapting to satisfy demands of Vietnamese customers. With the strategy, we plan to penetrate the market deeper to become a household brand.

H&M clothes in Vietnam market is cheaper than other regional countries. How do you make that happen?

We believe our business idea is fashion and quality at the best price in the sustainability way. We really want to have competitive prices in Vietnam, because we want to become a household brand in the country. Vietnamese thinks about fashion, they should think about H&M. We not only want to penetrate big cities, but smaller cities. We want that every body know our brand and is affordable to buy our products.

Of course we can earn much more money short term by selling with higher prices. But we look at very much long term in Vietnam. We want to be a brand that everyone appreciate. Everyone can shop that. We believe this is a right strategy, enabling us to expand in the strong way here in the years to come. We want our customers to understand that qualified fashion does not mean it is sold with expensive price.

Do you think to scale up your business in Vietnam right now?

Business is like a five-star restaurant. When thing comes out on the plate in the beautiful restaurant, every thing looks perfect. But when you go inside the kitchen, there are a lot of thing happening, a lot of stress. We knew this and we are ready to face it.

We are the largest fashion brand in the world. But still want Vietnamese brands to understand Vietnamese customers and we are here for the long run. We have been in Vietnam for many years.

We started sourcing our garments. We have production in Vietnam since 2011. We have a lot of factories in Vietnam which produce garment for us. We have been here for many years. And we want to be here for many years to come. We don’t really want to be in big cities only. We really want to be in smaller cities. 

► H&M to open 8th Vietnamese store a week ahead of Uniqlo debut