Cheap Monday
Cheap Monday is a Swedish clothing label. It was founded in 2000 by Örjan Andersson and Adam Friberg, originally as a second-hand clothing store, in a suburb of Stockholm. The clothes started selling on March 10, 2004, and from the beginning in only one store called Weekday. The name of the brand originates from the fact that the original store was only open on Sunday. [1] The brand is known for their idiosyncratic designs, and has expanded from their original focus on jeans to include sneakers, flannel, and shirts. Current creative director is Ann-Sofie Back.
Cheap Monday clothes are distributed in a variety of stores worldwide, including Urban Outfitters and Barneys New York. Recently, Cheap Monday has also found strong popularity in Melbourne, Australia. Apart from franchisees, Cheap Monday have five stand-alone stores in London, Copenhagen, Paris, Beijing and Shenyang. Several pop-up stores have also been established during the recent years, in among other cities Stockholm, Utrecht, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. They are recognized by their distinctive logo of a skull, which originally included an inverted crucifix. The designers of the logo, Björn Atldax and Karl Grandin of the design group Vår, meant it as an anti-Christian statement, citing the religion as the cause of many wars.[1] By January 2010, the logo was altered with the inverted crucifix replaced by a single vertical line.
Acquisition
On March 6, 2008 it was announced that retailer H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) would acquire the company Fabric Scandinavien AB, maker of Cheap Monday jeans and operator of the Weekday store. H&M bought 60 percent of Fabric Scandinavien for 564 million Swedish kronor (US$92 million at the time) from the founders of the company: Adam Friberg, Lars Karlsson, Örjan Andersson and Linda Friberg. H&M has "the possibility/obligation to acquire the remaining shares in the company within three to five years."[2]
