Still room for improvement in China, says H&M CEO

"Overall, we see it's going in the right direction even though we're not at the level we want to be," Helena Helmersson said in an interview with Reuters. "We do see that our focus on the customer offering and also making the customer experience really locally relevant is paying off." H&M no longer provides sales figures for specific countries, so tracking its performance in China is difficult.

H&M is still not at the level it wants to be in China but things are going in the right direction, its CEO said on Thursday, after the retailer suffered a consumer boycott over its stance on alleged human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region. "Overall, we see it's going in the right direction even though we're not at the level we want to be," Helena Helmersson said in an interview with Reuters.

"We do see that our focus on the customer offering and also making the customer experience really locally relevant is paying off." H&M no longer provides sales figures for specific countries, so tracking its performance in China is difficult. But its first-half performance in the Asia and Oceania region improved, with an operating profit margin of 1.8%, compared to -0.8% in the same period last year.