Swedish retailer H&M, which runs 11 stores in Romania, sold EUR 14.3 million worth of clothing and fashion items in the first three months of this year in the country. Sales per store averaged at EUR 1.3 million, comparable to those in H&M's home country Sweden, where it runs 173 stores.

This was one third of the sales in Russia, where the retailer runs 21 stores. Slovakia, a market with a similar number of H&M stores as Romania, brought the retailer under half of the sales in Romania, according to H&M's most recent report.

The Polish market, where the retailer has 91 stores, delivered sales five times higher than Romania's. The bulk of H&M's sales came from Germany, where it has 393 stores and where it sold clothing items worth some EUR 814 million.

The retailer's sales worldwide stood at some EUR 3 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 13 percent, while its profit after tax was of some EUR 305 million. Read the full financial report here. 

H&M entered the Romanian market in 2011 and quickly expanded across the country, with stores located in shopping centers. The retailer runs around 2,300 stores on 43 markets.

Corina Saceanu, corina@romania-insider.com