Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson

Associated Partner for The Enterprise of Culture
Centre for Business History Stockholm

Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson is a Senior Advisor for the Centre for Business History Stockholm, one of the Associated Partner organisations for the Enterprise of Culture. An ethnologist and art historian, Ingrid has a long experience of the international and Swedish fashion industry, having worked in French haute couture houses as well as in European fashion organizations and as Director of the Swedish Fashion Council. She is the initiator of the establishment of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm (one of the project partners for the Enterprise of Culture) where she was instrumental in the documentation of the History of H&M. She is counsellor to various cultural and business institutions, and has promoted and curated several exhibitions on dress and fashion including Ten Views of Sweden at the National Museum in Stockholm in 2005. Ingrid is currently undertaking the role of interviewer for a pilot oral history programme as part of the Enterprise of Culture.

Abstract

The secrets behind H&M’s core values

In 1947 the entrepreneur Erling Persson opened his first store in Sweden. He drew inspiration from the United States, where he had come into contact with retail chains that sold clothes at low prices. This new concept soon became a major success in Sweden, and the company, then called 'Hennes', grew rapidly: within 20 years, H&M expanded to Scandinavia, and then to Europe. In 2000, it opened its first store in the United States. Today H&M operates in 61 countries worldwide and has around 4000 stores.

What lessons did H&M take from the Swedish market, based on the country’s political, historical and socio-cultural heritage? And how were these lessons applied in the company’s global expansion? What company philosophy was passed down from the founder Erling Persson?

H&M is a Swedish company that is now internationally known, but it has never, unlike IKEA, trumpeted its ‘Swedishness’. However, many of the guiding principles behind its corporate philosophy and culture can be traced back to Swedish social and political thinking.