H&M: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Stockholm-based marketplace H&M. Here you can find information on how to request a H&M account, how to configure this channel on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

 

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Channel features

Settings and configuration

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Mappings
• Pricing
• Listed products

FAQs

 

 

Commercial information

Headquarters	Stockholm, Sweden
Area served (orders)	Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom
Website	H&M
Setup cost	none*
Commission	none*
Other costs	none*
Payment	biweekly invoices, 30-day payment terms
Product categories	fashion, shoes, accessories, home interior, decorations, furniture, outdoor, lighting, textiles, kids
Input language	English
Input currency	EUR, GBP, SEK
Content creation	yes
Minimum number of SKUs	no
Advertisement options	no
Profile on ChannelEngine	H&M

* See the Associated costs section.

 

How to request an account

To start selling on H&M, contact your Customer Success Manager at ChannelEngine.

 

Associated costs

Unlike most other channels, H&M does not charge setup, monthly or commission fees. Their approach leans toward the drop-shipping model, with merchants taking a negotiable percentage of products sold through H&M.

 

Channel features

Supported	Not supported
Product offers (EAN matching)	Returns (channel)
Product content (HTML formatting not supported)	External fulfillment
Orders (no split orders)	Automatic relationships
Returns/refunds (merchant)
Shipments (including carrier mapping)
Cancelations (merchant)
Repricing (only competition statistics)
Product variations (size/color)

 

Settings and configuration

Setting up each channel on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, once you add the channel:

1. Go through the Setup
2. Create a Product selection
3. Complete the Categorization
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion
6. Finish the Activation
7. Check the Listed products overview

 

Channel-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On ChannelEngine

H&M is a Mirakl-based channel, so you can connect it to ChannelEngine using a Mirakl Connect SSO account. For more information on this, check out the Mirakl-based channels: SSO authorization article.

You can also fill out the Mirakl seller name field, if you want to access competition statistics.

Invoice uploads

To configure your invoice settings, click Advanced settings. You can then click the dropdown menu Enable invoice uploading, which contains the following options:

• ChannelEngine invoices - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it automatically generates an invoice and attaches it to the shipment.
• Merchant invoices (optional) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it exports it – even if there is no invoice attached to it.
• Merchant invoices (required) - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it only exports it if an invoice is attached to it. If not, you receive a notification.
• None - when ChannelEngine receives a shipment, it takes no action other than notifying you that no invoice is present.

 

Categorization

Categorization is mandatory if you want to create or update existing product information on H&M. Both categorizations and mappings only result in updates if the content connection is enabled, and the relevant credentials have been entered (see the Setup section).

Although certain attributes on H&M require input in Swedish or German, the categorization and most mappings are in English.

 

Mappings

Content

H&M has a long list of optional attributes, but most of them are different versions of the same attribute according to the main language of each market. There are also multiple attributes related to images.

All products (required)

• Brand (customer facing) - the product's brand. If your brand is not included, please contact H&M so they can add it. E.g.: Signify.
• Color group - the product's color, must be mapped to a H&M value. E.g.: red.
• Commodity code - a sequence of numbers made up of six (WCO Harmonized System code), eight or ten digits (Intrastat declaration). E.g.: 020421.
• Country of origin - the product's country of origin. E.g.: Spain.
• GTIN - the product's GTIN or EAN.
• Image 1 asset type - the kind of image mapped to Image 1 URL. The options are descriptive detail, descriptive lifestyle, and lookbook.
• Image 1 URL - the product's main image.
• Long product description_en-GB - the product's description, written in English. The maximum number of characters is 800.
• Long title/product name_en-GB - the product's title, written in English. Note that the product's brand, series or collection, identifiers, color, and volume or size should not be included in the title. The maximum number of characters is 50.
• Product level identifier - determines where the product is within the product hierarchy. Also known as GroupNo, it can be mapped with the Parent SKU – or its own MPN, if it is a standalone product. E.g.: SKU123.
• RGB HEX-colour code - the product's HEX color code, representing all possible color variations of the product. E.g.: #A9A39B.
• Size - the product's size. E.g.: XL, EU36, IT40.
• Supplier SKU - the product's internal reference, at the lowest level. Usually the Merchant product number.
• Visual or fragrance distinction_en-GB - a short description of the product's appearance, written in English, with the goal to differentiate different variations of the same product. The maximum number of characters is 30. E.g.: white, dotted.

 

Offer

The only mandatory offer mappings are Price, Shipped from, and VAT rate %. More on them can be found in the bullet list below.

Attributes such as Leadtime to shipment (the number of days before you ship the item), Logistic class (your optional shipping class), Offer state (the condition of your item), and Minimum quantity alert (so you receive a notification if the stock drops below a certain threshold) are common for Mirakl mappings.

• Price - the default Mirakl price field must be mapped with a price, but this is not the price attribute used by H&M. See RRP [country].
• Shipped from - the country from where the product is shipped. This attribute must be mapped to a value known to H&M (option mapping), and is limited to the countries they support.
• VAT rate % - the product's VAT rate.
• RRP (recommended retail price) [country] - the product's sale price for each specific country, used by H&M.
• Eco-contribution - a tax related to the proper disposal and recycling of certain types of products in markets such as France and Malta. If you sell on H&M Home in the French market, this attribute must be mapped.

Working with discounts

• Do not leave the Discount end date attribute unmapped. If you want to set a permanent discount, use a date in the far future instead. Otherwise the offer is not exported, and errors are shown under the Validation and feedback tab.
• If your discounted price is not lower than the base price, it is not exported.
• If you do not want to set a bulk discount, leave the Discount quantity threshold attribute unmapped – otherwise the export is broken.
• If you do want to set a bulk discount, the Discount quantity threshold must be set to a value higher than 1. E.g.: a value of 2 indicates that two or more of the product must be purchased at the same time for the buyer to benefit from the discount.

 

Carrier

Carrier mapping is not required on H&M. However, you can map your carrier to a specific list of carriers maintained by H&M. This allows for working track-and-trace links in the back-end, as well as for the buyer. If your default carrier is missing, please contact H&M. Note that it is mandatory to include a pre-printed return label in the parcel.

 

Pricing

If your prices are separated by a comma instead of a dot, make sure to convert them to a dot-separated value. To do this in bulk, you can use this replacement tag: {[YOUR PRICE FIELD]|Replace{,|.}}. E.g.: {CE:Price|Replace{,|.}}.

Listed products

If you have problems with products not appearing on H&M (especially if you are trying to create products that do not exist yet), check the Listed products section for more information.

You can either filter on Channel status (Invalid for all products that ChannelEngine has not exported, such as products with an empty EAN or products that currently do not exist on H&M) or use the Validation and feedback tab to see all known validation/feedback errors for specific products. Also, as H&M uses the Mirakl marketplace framework, you can see detailed status reports in their back-end. These reports contain specific errors if a product or product offer cannot be created.

The reports can be found under My inventory, Import from file, Track offer imports/Track product imports. By hovering over the 'i' under the Status section, you can see how many products in the file were processed correctly and how many had errors, etc.

If there are errors, the last column shows a downloadable file in which they are listed. The same goes for the product file import, but this can contain multiple files because processing goes through several systems. There is also a manual check of your submitted content, which, once approved, goes to staging as well. Note that you need to map as much as possible to prevent products from not being created.

 

 

H&M uses specific recommended retail price (RRP) attributes per market to set the price for customers shopping on the platform. The discount price export by ChannelEngine is only used internally, and has no impact on the retail price.

FAQs

How often does each task run on H&M?

Task	Frequency
Export product data to channel	every 60 minutes
Export product offers to channel	every 15 minutes
Import product offers from channel	every 15 minutes
Import orders from channel	every 15 minutes
Export order shipments to channel	every 15 minutes
Export returns to channel	every 30 minutes