The last company visit for CITO this semester was H&M. On December 1st, James Chang welcomed us to the H&M office in Taipei located on the 23rd floor of the building. Mr Chang, who is PR Manager in Taiwan, began to describe and explain H&M’s business in Taiwan. He told us that the company launched on the Taiwan market in 2015 and now has 12 stores around the country. This year in May, H&M opened the online store on the Taiwanese market. The company has three types of offices in Taiwan with different purposes. The Taipei based office is a Support office while Area and Distribution offices are located around the country.
The first market for H&M to launch on in Asia was Hong Kong. This market was aimed to function as “traning” for future launches. Mr Chang explained that Taiwan is a different market compared to Mainland China. In Taiwan, the decisions are taken locally but they have to some level be controlled by Hong Kong. Regarding marketing on the Taiwanese market, Mr Chang and his work team have to follow directions from Sweden. Still, they can put a local touch on their work. For example, they could influence the Asian campaigns and they are able to decide the sizes of the different campaigns that are launched in Taiwan. James Chang was furthermore asked how a regular work day at the Taipei office would look like. Firstly, he mentioned that he takes part of new information from Sweden. This could be information about PR plans or press releases. Other work during the day are usually connected to how H&M should work with influencers, which is a relatively new field in Mr Chang’s work as a PR Manager.
At the end of the company visit, James Chang took us to H&M’s showroom in the other end of the floor which has a great view over Taipei city and Taipei 101. We were able to meet parts of Mr Chang’s work team who mainly works in the Showroom. The room contained H&M’s latest collection which was about to launch in the stores and online in the near future.
CITO would like to thank James Chang for a very interesting company visit where we were able to take part of information about one of the world’s most successful companies. Thank you!
CITO with James Chang
H&M Showroom
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