H&M Group merges Weekday, Monki, revives Cheap Monday in new youth-focused operation

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 20, 2023

​H&M Group has announced that its youth-focused Weekday brand will be the main thrust of “a new destination for the young, creative generation” that sees Monki becoming part of Weekday and Cheap Monday being revived.

It said it has “the ambition to create an exciting, broadened experience, adapted to the young customers’ needs and preferences”. This means “Weekday will form the umbrella of a new youth destination. "The unique brands Weekday and Monki will be offered, together with Cheap Monday, that is set to return with a small assortment of jeans.”

The company had announced Cheap Monday’s closure back in 2018 after owning it for a decade and struggling to make its legacy wholesale model work.

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As for the change to the Monki set-up, H&M explained: “The work to meet customers’ changing behaviours and further strengthening the competitiveness, goes on. To develop Weekday into a youth destination, the Monki brand will be incorporated into the Weekday unit. This will leverage customer synergies and also reduce administration and operational costs, freeing up resources to further focus on developing the brand experiences and a strengthened overall offer.”

But it seems that fans of Monki should still be able to find what they see as special about that label with the company adding: “The unique Weekday and Monki brand experiences will remain, at the same time as new opportunities with combined customer experiences will be explored.”

Anna Attemark, Head of Portfolio Brands at the group, said it sees “great potential with this new youth destination, with the brands Weekday, Monki and Cheap Monday. Over time we will also explore how to further develop it by including more partners.” 

The Head Office of the new entity will be based in Weekday’s current premises in Stockholm and the organisational changes will come into effect “during the coming months”.

The Monki Head Office in Gothenburg will close, “which will regrettably affect Monki employees”. The company said everyone in the Monki team “will be supported to apply for a role within the new organisation, or to a continued career elsewhere within or outside the wider H&M group”.

There were no details about the scale of any job losses although Attemark added: “While looking forward to having the new organisation up and running, we remain humble for the changes this entails for some of our employees.”

The company didn't say what would happen to Monki stores. It has continued opening these with it recently opening in Oslo.