Swedish fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) is planning to close more stores in order to cope with the sales decline during the fourth quarter of this year.

The company noted that the sales in the quarter were significantly low and 4% less when compared with the corresponding quarter last year.

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According to the company, the reduction in footfall to stores and customers’ fast-changing behaviour, were major contributors to the declining sales.

“As one of the world’s most innovative fashion companies, H&M is a perfect fit for Alibaba’s Tmall platform by next year.”

In order to stay on par with the customers’ behaviour, the company intends to accelerate its transformation strategy of integrating its physical with digital stores, as well as increasing the optimisation of the H&M brand’s store portfolio.

However, the H&M brand’s online sales and sales of the group’s other brands continued to develop well.

The company has also extended its collaboration with China’s Alibaba Group by including both the H&M and H&M Home brands on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Tmall.

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Alibaba Group president Michael Evans said: “As one of the world’s most innovative fashion companies, H&M is a perfect fit for Alibaba’s Tmall platform by next year.

“We are honoured to expand our cooperation with H&M and host their flagship store, enabling H&M brands to engage with our half a billion consumers.”

H&M also plans to launch more brands on Tmall in the near future.

H&M group CEO Karl-Johan Persson said: “We are very happy to be able to make H&M even more accessible in mainland China. Tmall is an important complement to our existing physical and digital stores. We see great potential for substantial future growth and Tmall will be an important part of this.