H&M pulls plug on outlet platform Afound

The Swedish H&M Group is pulling the plug on its outlet platform Afound, where the fashion giant sold clothes from its own brands and from third-party brands at a discount. Not enough other brands still showed an interest, apparently.

Not enough demand

The group announced that Afound would cease operations during the autumn. In seven countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, customers could find older collections and bargains of H&M brands and other brands (such as Veja and New Balance) through Afound.

However, brands are increasingly choosing to use their own channels for clearance sales, “in order to further strengthen their customer relationships” – actually meaning: also serve bargain hunters and price-sensitive consumers directly. This led to the difficult but necessary decision to discontinue Afound, H&M Group said.

The platform’s operations will be wound down in the coming months, but the Swedish group says that it has learnt a lot from this new way of dealing with ‘off-price’ and that it will continue to build on the insights and lessons learned from the project. Afound started in 2018 with physical shops (in Sweden), but later became primarily an online platform.