Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) will find business thrilling this year as it would expand its products into other new markets, the world’s No.2 clothing retailer said on Thursday, as it posted less than rousing Q4 profits.
“Although there are still macro-economic challenges in several of our markets, we are optimistic about 2014 which will be an exciting year with new countries and new opportunities,” Reuters quoted CEO, Karl-Johan Persson as saying.
The new countries in the company’s focus are certainly in sub-Saharan Africa. A couple of weeks back, the clothing firm said it planned to pay more attention to the textile market of sub-Saharan Africa as opposed to Asia like before.
It said sub-Saharan Africa had great potential in terms of production and the firm had already begun to produce in Ethiopia on a small scale. It also emerged late last year that the firm planned to set up shop in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It is understood that H&M will open up a new shop in the Mall of Africa in Johannesburg and plans are already afoot to open another one in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront.
The Mall of Africa is still under construction and will be opened in March 2016. It is situated on the N1 highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. It is next to Midrand’s Allandale turn off.
With 115 000 square meters, the Mall of Africa is the single biggest shopping mall to be built in South Africa.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that the clothing firm had posted a pretax profit which missed analysts’ expectations, rising only 11 percent to $1.1 billion.
*Ventures Africa