H&M’s sales have been lukewarm despite a hot collection of fashions from famed designer Roberto Cavalli.
The Swedish retail giant, which is known officially as Hennes & Mauritz and operates nine H&M stores in New York City, yesterday said its global comparable sales edged up only 1 percent last month from the year-earlier period, disappointing analysts who had hoped the line of proprietary Cavalli clothes would juice demand when it launched Nov. 8.
The famously extravagant Italian designer, who is now making costumes for the Spice Girls’ comeback world tour, introduced a one-off line of steamy evening wear last month that drew mobs of frenzied shoppers to H&M’s Manhattan stores.
“Everything was gone off the mannequins 10 minutes after the sale started,” said Juliana Cairone, a Cavalli devotee who owns a vintage couture shop on West 57th Street. “There was a woman who actually got stampeded – security guards had to pull people off of her.”
It didn’t help that the Cavalli collection was rolled out to only 200 of H&M’s more than 1,500 stores.
H&M’s previous one-off collections – from designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Viktor & Rolf – have seen far wider launches.
But H&M reined in the Cavalli launch, an executive said, noting that it was “a more extreme and extravagant collection.”
With the Cavalli fashions sold out at stores, some shoppers have been selling their prize booty on eBay, noted Kathy Deane, president of Tobe, a global fashion consultant. Cavalli’s designs included zebra-print dresses and coats and leopard-print push-up bras. A wool tux had retailed for $299 – an unusually high price at H&M.
Total sales at H&M rose 14 percent in November as the chain continued to add stores at a frenzied pace. Still, that fell slightly short of October’s 15 percent gain.
Analysts blamed warmer-than-usual weather in Europe – where the bulk of H&M stores are located – for sluggish sales of coats, sweaters and other cold-weather accessories.