Sandy Livak-Furmanski, 30, from Givatayim received a thank you letter from the press department of fashion chain H&M on Tuesday, acknowledging her support of the Swedish clothing giant's coming to Israel.
Over a year ago Sandy, a great fan of the chain's clothes, founded a group on Facebook dedicated to bringing the chain to Israel. The group, titled "Open an H&M store in Israel!" started out with only a few members, most of them Sandy's friends, but rapidly expanded and currently consists of more than 11,000 members, mostly women.
"We are very pleased to inform you of the decision (to open a store in Israel) and thank you for your support and enthusiasm. It's a strong vote of confidence," the H&M letter read. "We very much appreciate your interest in H&M and hope you'll share this news with all of your members."
"It started out as a joke," Sandy admitted Tuesday. "Every time I visited my grandmother in Finland I would buy heaps of clothes and return to Israel with tons of items.
"I thought that it was high time the company opened a store here," she explained.
After the Facebook group opened, a rivaling, though tiny group was established by H&M aficionados who urged the company not to come to Israel, claiming that "If this chain makes aliyah - it will never be unique again and everyone in Israel would wear the same clothes."
Although Sandy's initiative was probably not entirely responsible for H&M's decision to come to the country, she nevertheless sounded quite thrilled with the company's letter. "Until I got this letter I didn't even know that they were aware of the groups' existence," she said.
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