In 1946, Erling Persson opens a women's clothing store in Sweden called Hennes, which is Swedish for "hers." About two years later, Persson bought a hunting apparel and fishing store, called Mauritz Widforss. When he combined that brand with Hennes, the store began to sell women's and men's clothing. That new store was called Hennes and Mauritz—more commonly known as H&M

The multinational clothing-retail company operated in 74 countries where it had over 5k stores as of November 2019. It had also employed 126k people in full-time positions at that time. H&M is the second-largest global retailer, just behind Inditex which is the parent company of Zara.