The first clothes shop to visit if you're in a rush (H&M)

Member Name: djwhite1982

Product:	H&M
Date:	12/08/09 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value, good quality

Disadvantages: No online shop

H&M is a Men's, Women's and Children's clothing store which operates all over the world. There stores seems to be constantly popping up in new locations and so are obviously continuing to grow as the brand becomes more and more well known and popular.

Whenever I pay a visit to the shops to buy any kind of clothing, you can guarantee that H&M will get a visit, and that 9 times out of 10 will get my money. To give you a rough idea of what you can expect, the store seem to have found its place in the market somewhere just above Primark but just below GAP. The clothes tend to be aimed at the younger generation in that a lot of the clothes reflect the "latest trends" (i.e. the kind of things you'd find in Topshop/Topman), however there are still all the classic clothing items here and definitely something to keep most age groups happy.

When you visit H&M you are guaranteed to get value for money, and there are some real bargains to be had here. The quality of the clothes is also pretty good. I find that jeans are a decent tester of quality and so on that basis, the dark jeans I bought from H&M for £25 over a year ago are still going strong. The colour has only faded very slightly, which is to be expected. Pretty good quality I would say.

Their larger stores sell basically every form of clothing, although its probably fair so say there target is the "smart casual" to "casual" range. The larger stores, (in terms of men's departments) do sell the odd suit but these are few and far between. I won't even try to categorise the style in the Ladies department, as my girlfriend will confirm that I can't but I guess its a similar kind of level!
The smaller stores in towns tend to have less variety of clothes, due to the obvious restriction of space. The first things to go in the men's department seem to be shoes, smart trousers and blazers.

Any returns are always pretty easy, and the few items I've returned I've been given my money back with no questions asked.

In the interest of fairness I should point out the few negatives to H&M, although for me, these aren't anywhere near sufficient to put me off.

My major complaint with H&M as a company, is for some reason they do not have an online clothing store. I'm sure there is a good reason for it, probably because it forces you to go to the shop at which point you come up having bought twice as many thing as you wanted / needed. However, as someone who doesn't particularly like shopping and would prefer to do some shopping from the comfort of my office desk, I find this a little frustrating.

In order to keep their costs down they do cram as many things as possible into their stores and so you will find their stores and quite congested with clothing rails and people squeezing around.

I have noticed that in some of the out of town stores for some reason they do not have a men's department at all, which I find a little annoying. My local town is Wimbledon which has a decent size H&M catering for Women, and a smaller one next door for children. Nothing for Men. Why not?!?!?!

Other than those few issue, I have to say this is one of my favourite places to shop and would recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of fashion at bargain prices.

Summary: Always worth a visit if you're out shopping, would've been 5 stars but for the lack of online shop