Balmain x H&M launch leads to chaos outside flagship stores, police intervenes outside H&M’s flagship Regent Street store in London

The release of Balmain x H&M created an upstir around the world as customers queued up outside H&M stores in various countries on Thursday.

The hopefuls queued up outside various H&M flagship stores overnight. This surge in the interest of people was witnessed probably because H&M has joined hands with luxury Parisian fashion house Balmain.

Nearly 3,000 customers went bonkers to lay their hands upon the clothing pieces from the fast-fashion retailer’s latest designer collaboration, which is the Balmain x H&M collection, The New York Times reports.

The situation was difficult in Manchester as hundreds of people waited for hours at a stretch to grab designer clothes from the store. However, the condition outside the London store was far worse off as police had to intervene to control the crowd at H&M’s flagship Regent Street store. According to the Mirror, people started queuing up outside the stores in Korea a week before.

The collaboration of the designer chains was officially unveiled on Oct. 20 with a runway show in New York. The brand’s well planned advertising campaigns is the key to the success of this collaboration. Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid and Jourdan Dunn were picked up to promote this venture. The items of Balmain x H&M collection were sold on eBay at double price.

Hashtag #HMBalmaination was introduced on social media in May, months before the launch, to publicize this collaboration. The consumers were persuaded to mark their desired items, and were asked to gear up to hit the website as soon as the collection was unveiled for sale. These exceptional marketing strategies drew the attention of the consumers and this probably led to the chaos that was seen on the day of launch.

Those waiting to shop online were left disappointed as the H&M website crashed within a few minutes after the launch. This happened probably because of the massive number of visitors who were eagerly waiting infront of their computer screens.

In Australia, the consumers went to the extent of camping outside the Sydney Pitt Street store for more than 24 hours. The situation was similar in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur where people waited for approximately 50 hours.

To control the situation outside the stores, H&M issued wrist bands to all those who were queued up. People were given a time limit of only 10 minutes to shop and hop out of the stores.

H&M took to Twitter to apologize for the chaos outside the outlets.

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