H&M to Put Chic in Chicago?

Hennes & Mauritz AB (Stockholm), the Swedish retailer that has launched a growing chain of H&M apparel stores in the U.S. in the last two years, is reportedly looking at space on Chicago's Michigan Avenue.

According to Crain's Chicago Business, the 43,000-square-foot location is one currently occupied by FAO Schwarz and Express for Men. FAO Schwarz indicated last year that it would be giving up its 30,000 square feet in the building.

H&M, which created a big splash with its first “cheap chic” discount apparel store in New York's Rockefeller Center in 2000, now has more than 40 stores between Boston and Philadelphia. Chicago would be its first non-East Coast location. Internationally, it has 785 stores in 14 countries (206 in Germany, 118 in Sweden).

The company's stores typically range from 10,000 to 40,000 square feet, with the biggest stores offering men's, women's and children's clothing, accessories and H&M's own brand of cosmetics. The apparel is designed by H&M staff and made in factories in Asia and Europe. New merchandise arrives on the floor every day and the stores change their displays every two weeks.

The retailer had previously announced plans to open 85 stores in the U.S. by 2003 but slowed the pace of its build-out earlier this year to get to profitability more quickly at its U.S. stores. Crain's cited a Swedish magazine report that the company can get a new store opened in six weeks and is trying to condense that time frame to as little as three weeks. It was founded in 1947 by Erling Persson with a Stockholm women's apparel store called Hennes (Swedish for “hers”). It later bought the hunting and men's clothing store Mauritz Widforss. The Persson family still controls the company.