H&M went from 13 stores in Hong Kong to 1 — the flagship model that couldn't hold its rent

H&M entered Hong Kong in March 2007 with the brand's first East Asian flagship store, opening at Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong to enormous crowds. The market was a strategic beachhead for the Swedish fast-fashion giant's Asia expansion. Over the following years H&M grew rapidly, opening 13 to 16 stores across the territory, including a four-level, 46,000-square-foot flagship on Fashion Walk in Causeway Bay that opened in 2013 at a rent of HK$10 million per month — then one of the most expensive retail leases in the city.

By early 2026 that flagship was gone. The Causeway Bay store closed on 21 February, followed the next day by the Festival Walk store that had been H&M's very first in Hong Kong. Together the closures left H&M with a single remaining store at Tsuen Wan Plaza. The stated reason was 'lease expiry' and 'portfolio optimisation,' but the numbers tell a harsher story: the Causeway Bay space was subsequently subdivided, with about 10,000 square feet of ground-floor area reportedly leased to a local drugstore chain at HK$120,000 per month — one-eighth of what H&M had paid for the full four floors.

H&M's retreat mirrors a broader shift in Hong Kong's retail landscape. The market that attracted global flagship stores in the 2000s and early 2010s — buoyed by booming Chinese tourist spending — has been reshaped by the pandemic, cross-border e-commerce, and northbound consumption as Hong Kong residents increasingly shop in Shenzhen. Even H&M's promise to 'actively seek new suitable locations' rang hollow: the brand had been quietly reducing its Hong Kong footprint for years, closing stores one by one as leases expired.

The HK$10 million monthly rent on the Causeway Bay store had become the symbol of an era. At that level, a flagship generates revenue only through massive throughput — the kind only tourist-driven foot traffic can sustain. When the tourists stopped coming and the locals started shopping across the border, the flagship model broke. H&M's decision not to renew was less a choice than a recognition that the rent, and the retail strategy it represented, belonged to a Hong Kong that no longer existed.