“H&M has been under significant pressure in recent years as it faces competition from fellow fast-fashion retailers such as Zara and Primark as well as online pureplays such as Zalando and ASOS, who have been luring away its customers. At the start of the year, H&M began to implement a new strategy to help reach a growth target for the 2018/19 financial year. Its strategy so far has been to reduce discounting, which appears to be working as its Q3 results, revealed at the start of this week, marked H&M's steepest sales growth in the past three years. The news that H&M will now be selling other brands shows that the retailer is aiming to compete more directly with other multi-brand retailers in a bid to attract new shoppers. This is something that the H&M Group already does with its other retailers, Arket and &Other Stories, which have other brands that sit alongside and complement its main own-label offerings. Data from Mintel'sClothing Retailing - UK, October 2018Report shows that over two thirds (67%) of clothing shoppers say that they prefer to buy clothing from a variety of brands, proving that there is an appetite for this. Indeed, fellow high street retailer Next does this very successfully, mainly via its website which has performed solidly for the retailer, even when in-store sales have been down.”