H&M is one of Sweden's most successful companies now. They sell clothes, and in Stockholm H&M stores are almost as common as convenience stores are here in Japan...
H&M arrived in Japan a few years ago and opened a store in Ginza, a very posh and expensive district in Tokyo. They later opened another store in Harajuku, where the young Japanese buy fashionable clothes in Tokyo. They had huge lines in front of the H&M store in Harajuku when I passed by a few months after it had opened. In Stockholm it would normally be weird to stand in line to get into H&M since there are so many stores and since it is considered mostly a "cheap, but nice" brand, rather than something exclusive you might be ready to stand in line for.
In Sapporo, H&M opened their first store last Saturday. That day it was completely packed, and there was a long line in front of the store, I am told. I dropped by yesterday to see what it looked like. Yesterday it was pretty empty, and it looked very much like any H&M store in Sweden. It had 4 floors of a building in our central shopping area. By Japanese fashion price standards, H&M is not cheap. Not very expensive either, but you can get better quality cheaper here in Japan (Japan is in general cheaper than Sweden, though, so this is not unexpected).
