Stefan Persson
May 30, 2011 – 11:27 am
Stefan persson joined Hennes & Mauritz, Stockholm city, Sweden in 1972, hold a chair in the board in 1979 and acted as the chief executive officer from 1982-1998. He also holds a chair in the boards of Electrolux, INGKA and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. He was awarded with International award by U.S. national Retail Federation in the year 2000. He is ranked as Sweden’s wealthiest person.
Stefan Persson was born on 4th October, 1947 in Stockholm, Sweden. His father Erling was an entrepreneur who founded Hennes & Mauritz AB which is also known as “H&M”. This company holds around 900 stores globally and is well known for its heap but quality and style products. He insisted on making the quality products affordable which result in great success for the company. He was the first to take the initiative to introduce the company into global market.
Persson’s father Erling established this company in year 1947 and opened a clothing store named Hennes which became very famous for having an inexpensive and stylish women’s clothing. In 1968, Hennes Company introduced men’s clothing by Mauritz Widforss who was a Swedish Retailer. This changed the name of Hennes to Hennes and Mauritz. In the year 1972, Persson joined his father’s firm and launched the first London store which became a success very soon.
In the year 1979, he got a board chair with his father who was the chief executive officer of the company. The company expanded its stores to West Germany in the year 1980 and by the end of the year 1985; the company owned 200 clothing stores in the continent including Britain.
In the year 1982, Stefan Persson took the chair of chief executive officer after retirement of his father. H&M continued to grow and observed an annual growth of 25 percent for several years. Then the company launched a new collection for children and maternity wears which made it the best among the competitors. One of the reasons behind this success was that his company has its own designers who are capable of creating good products at reasonable prices. The company expanded all over to countries like China, Bangladesh and Turkey and outsourced around 1,600 low cost suppliers to cut the cost.
Erling, Stefan Persson’s father, died in October 2002 at the age of 85 years. Persson and his sister hold around 37 percent of the capital and 70 percent of the voting shares of H&M. He always focused on providing quality products at reasonable prices.