The New H&M High-Tech Flagship Opens Thursday

H&M's 42,000-square-foot flagship at 4 Times Square opens this Thursday at midnight and it is taking high-tech to a whole new level.

Daniel Kulle, president of H&M North America, expects this store to be the company's most productive North America store. It opens at 12:01 a.m. Thursday with an appearance by Lady Gaga, who will be interacting with customers as well as shop at the store for several hours.

The flagship has 300 employees plus 44 fitting rooms and 24 registers. A new feature, called try and buy, allows shoppers to pay for items in the dressing-room area. "This is going to be a high-volume store," Kulle said. "Everything has been set up for high volume." Even the hours which will be 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week.

The flagship represents a much higher spend on technology for the company. "There are many components," Kulle said. "We can flex our H&M muscles to whatever we want, because the city allows it. It's expected."

There are two 30-by-20-foot LED screens hanging on the Broadway and 42rd Street sides of the building with a vertical H&M sign. There is also a curved 40-by-109-foot LED screen located above the H&M logo atop the main entrance. Then the ground-floor windows facing the street are interactive and light boxes with messages are found throughout the store. In addition, there are four 70-foot-high logos on the building's 45th floor lit in a New Year's Eve-style countdown to the store opening. "We're going to dominate the Manhattan skyline," Kulle said.

And that's just the outside! Inside there are two LED portals above the entrance featuring different graphic experiences, a display of revolving mannequins, vertical LED screens behind the fashion display, and a 20-by-30-foot LED screen behind the cash registers. Then the second and third-floor fitting-room areas have iPad stations with benches.

"We're excited to get the most trafficked corner of 42nd Street and Broadway and the biggest subway station," said Kulle.

The three-level store houses accessories, shoes and an expanded cosmetics line (ground floor), women will be on the second and men's and kids on the third. The mezzanine floor features the DJ booth, which will spin music continuously. Best of all there is a digital runway for shoppers to strut their stuff which will appear on the LED screens.

Asked whether H&M will build other tech-heavy stores, Kulle said, "I'm not saying it's not going to happen. We want to make stores that make the brand. The Fifth Avenue store will be a knockout in a different way. [Consumers] will feel they must see both."