Insights · Europe & Chicago
Mall or street? Where Zara, H&M and Mango open their stores
Gap is leaving malls. What about Zara, H&M and Mango? We mapped all their stores in five capitals of Central and Southeast Europe, and in Chicago, to compare with the US.
Gap is leaving malls
In October 2020, Gap Inc. announced it would close about 220 Gap and 130 Banana Republic stores in North America, mostly in malls. The goal: 80% of the remaining Gap stores outside malls. By early 2024 it had closed a net 344 Gap and Banana Republic stores.
That made us curious about the other big fashion brands. Are they still in malls, and does it depend on the city?
In our region, the brands are in malls
We started in our own region: Belgrade, Zagreb, Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Of the 101 Zara, H&M and Mango stores inside the city limits, 82 are in a mall. Prague is highest at 92%; Belgrade, Budapest and Zagreb are all around 85%.
Vienna is the exception, at 62%. It has the most street stores, partly because Austria’s largest shopping centre, Shopping City Süd, is just outside the city limits and so not counted here. In the other four cities, the few street stores are all on the main shopping street: Knez Mihailova, Ilica, Váci utca and Na Příkopě.
Put next to Gap’s plan, it is almost a mirror image.
Share of stores in a mall. Gap: plan for 2023. Zara, H&M and Mango: stores open in November 2026.
In Chicago, the same brands are on the street
Is this about the brands, or about the cities? To find out, we mapped the same three brands in Chicago, together with Gap.
Inside Chicago’s city limits, only one of the five Zara, H&M and Mango stores is in a mall: Zara at Block 37. Three are on Michigan Avenue. The malls are in the suburbs, and that is where the brands’ mall stores are too: 10 of their 11 suburban stores are in one.
Gap follows the same pattern. None of its three stores in the city is in a mall, while about half of its suburban stores still are. The numbers are small, but the picture is clear: in Chicago, the street is in the city and the malls are outside it.
Back in Belgrade, the malls are inside the city
Belgrade shows the difference best. Its malls are not on the edge of town but inside it: Ušće and Delta City in New Belgrade, Galerija on the Sava, BIG Fashion in the east. Seven malls hold 12 of the 14 stores. The only street stores are Zara and H&M on Knez Mihailova.
What this means for retailers
In the US, many malls are in the suburbs, so Gap’s move is partly a move away from them. In Belgrade or Prague, the malls are inside the city, close to where people live and work, so the same choice could look quite different.
A mall brings shoppers by car from the whole city; a main street brings walkers and tourists. Which one works depends on who lives and moves around each location, and on where the malls are. That is why the question has no single answer, and why it starts with a map.
How we measured it
- Stores: all Zara, H&M and Mango stores from the brands' official store locators, November 2026. Gap stores in the Chicago area from the official Gap store locator.
- Area: in the five European capitals, only stores inside the city limits (101 stores). In Chicago, stores inside the city limits and in the suburbs shown on the map.
- Mall or not: each store was checked against the shopping centres mapped in OpenStreetMap. Indoor shopping centres, including outlet malls, count as malls. Shopping streets, open-air retail parks and outdoor lifestyle centres count as outside.
- Gap: 2020 plan as reported by Retail Dive and Fortune (October 2020); store closures from the Gap Inc. annual report for fiscal 2023.
Some groups are small, so single stores move the percentages a lot. This is a snapshot of where stores are today, not a trend.
See it for your own location
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