COS to launch in Iceland this year, has opened men's store in Beijing

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 15, 2019

It was only a brief announcement but Swedish fashion retail giant H&M said on Tuesday that its COS brand is to launch in Iceland.

The brand, which first launched in the UK as far back as 2007, will follow a similar pattern to previous country debuts when it gets to Iceland. It will open first in the capital, Reykjavík. That will happen “later this year,” although for now, we don’t yet know exactly where or when.

The planned opening highlights H&M’s continued commitment to physical stores expansion, despite the challenges the firm has faced in growing its stores revenue in recent periods. 

The COS brand has proved popular since its debut almost 12 years ago (on London’s Regent Street) and has gone on to open stores across Europe, Asia, the US and the Middle East.

While much of the attention around H&M’s brands in recent periods has been focused on its newer names, it has remained busy as far as COS openings are concerned. 

It recently unveiled its first men’s speciality store in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, China. The 174 square metre location was designed to mesh with local tastes and is inspired by the historical architecture of the city. The new store came as it also opened a number of other Chinese shops in the latter half of 2018 and debuted on Alibaba’s Tmall.

And late last year COS set foot in Russia for the first time with an opening in Moscow’s Afimall. Spanning 540 square metres across a single floor, the new Russian store offers womenswear, menswear and kidswear.