We have previously written about the positioning of the most valuable brands in categories such as beer, media, automotive, B2B, payment solutions and luxury fashion, as well as of the most valuable brands overall. Today, we’re going to take a look at the brand strategies behind the three most valuable mass-market fashion brands, according to the Interbrand Best Global Brands 2025 ranking. These are: H&M (no. 68), Uniqlo (no. 47) and Zara (no. 41).
You might notice that we have excluded sportswear brands from this analysis. If we had treated mass fashion and sportswear as one category, Nike (no. 23) would top the list and Adidas (no. 49) would take third place, ahead of H&M. We decided, however, that sportswear deserves an article of its own, as these brands compete on different terms.
Two things about this year’s list are worth highlighting. First, Uniqlo has entered the Interbrand ranking for the very first time. Second, while Zara is currently the most valuable of the three, this hasn’t always been the case. Between 2008 and 2017 and again in 2021, it was H&M that held the higher brand value.
No. 3 H&M – fashion and quality at the best price in a sustainable way
H&M’s history dates back to 1947, when Swedish entrepreneur Erling Persson opened a womenswear store in Västerås called Hennes (Swedish for “hers”), modelled on the high-volume, low-price retail model he had observed in the United States. The brand took its current name in 1968, after Persson acquired the Stockholm hunting and outdoor retailer Mauritz Widforss, added menswear to the range and rebranded the business as Hennes & Mauritz, later shortened to H&M.
H&M’s brand strategy has been built on two long-standing pillars: accessibility and fashion. Accessibility has traditionally meant affordable prices, alongside the brand’s approachability and wide availability. The second pillar, fashion, positions H&M as a source of contemporary style and the latest trends. In 2024, the brand reaffirmed this focus through its “reignition”, a renewed commitment to fashion as its core, directed at a younger, fashion-led customer.
In the 2010s, H&M added one more brand value: sustainability. To answer growing concerns surrounding the fashion industry and counter a negative perception of the category related to manufacturing in low-cost countries, the company began using more organic and recycled materials, started cooperating with UNICEF to help abolish child labour, introduced the H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award and undertook multiple initiatives supporting social and environmental causes. The sustainability agenda was particularly visible in H&M’s activities in the first half of the 2020s, when Helena Helmersson, previously its head of sustainability, served as H&M’s CEO.
No. 2 Uniqlo – LifeWear
Uniqlo started in 1984 in Hiroshima as Unique Clothing Warehouse, a store selling mostly other brands’ clothing. Under founder Tadashi Yanai, still president of Fast Retailing, Uniqlo’s parent company, the brand reinvented itself in the late 1990s by adopting the SPA model (Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel), taking control of designing, producing and selling its own clothing. The 1998 fleece campaign, which saw the brand sell millions of low-priced, high-quality fleece jackets, turned Uniqlo into a household name in Japan and international expansion followed from 2001. Today Fast Retailing is the world’s third largest fashion retail group.
The main aspect differentiating Uniqlo from brands such as H&M and Zara is its business model. Uniqlo is not a fast fashion retailer, it doesn’t follow the latest trends or offer a wide selection of fast-changing products. Instead, it focuses on a limited number of basics (e.g., jeans, T-shirts, underwear), available in many colours. This approach gives the company a competitive advantage, as it allows substantial cost efficiencies. It also shapes the brand’s positioning, which is built on casual style rather than the fashion credentials its competitors claim. Uniqlo defines its vision as “to inspire the world to dress casual”. Its brand strategy is rooted in Japanese culture and encapsulated in the concept of LifeWear: simple but well designed, high-quality clothes for men, women and kids, made for everyday use, built to last and matching every style.
No. 1 Zara – on-trend fashion for everyone
Zara also started as a single store, opened in 1975 in A Coruña in Galicia, Spain, by Amancio Ortega and his then wife, Rosalía Mera. Initially, Ortega and Mera wanted to call the brand Zorba after the main character of the movie “Zorba the Greek” but the name was already taken by a bar on the same street, so they made a decision to call it Zara. In its first decade, Zara built its presence only in Spain. In 1985, the owners, in order to replicate Zara’s business model and utilise the existing factories more effectively, set up Inditex, the holding company. That’s when Zara began its global expansion, with the first international store opening in Porto, Portugal in 1988.
Zara’s cofounder, Amancio Ortega, is believed to be the originator of the fast fashion business model – an ultra-quick manufacturing process combined with short collections, allowing the company to respond rapidly to fast-changing trends.
Zara’s value proposition is to some extent similar to that of H&M – it is based on the promise of the latest trends at affordable prices. However, Zara is much more focused on building a premium brand image and targeting people with an interest in high fashion rather than street fashion. It does so through aspirational communication, strategic locations of its stores (situated next to more luxurious labels such as Gucci, Prada or Christian Dior) and through its specific approach to product development. Unlike H&M, which builds its fashion credentials by collaborating with high fashion designers and style icons, Zara (and Inditex as a whole), as The New York Times put it, “essentially imitates the latest fashions and speeds their cheaper versions into stores”. Zara’s designers are anonymous, but its products often resemble high fashion collections.
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