H&M opened its first store outside Sweden in Norway, in 1964.
The expansion came after Erling Persson founded Hennes in Västerås in 1947 as a women’s-clothing retailer. Norway was the company’s first international market, marking the beginning of H&M’s Scandinavian growth.
The wording can cause a common mix-up: the first store outside Scandinavia was not in Norway, but in London, which opened in 1976. Denmark followed Norway as another early Scandinavian market, while Germany came later during H&M’s wider European expansion.
In 1968, Persson acquired the Stockholm hunting-apparel company Mauritz Widforss. That deal added men’s clothing to the business and changed its name from Hennes to Hennes & Mauritz, later abbreviated as H&M. The brand continued expanding internationally before opening its first U.S. store in New York in 2000.