Advantages Of Zara

It is becoming apparent that the ever changing environment in the global marketplace requires a swifter response time from businesses and their supply chains. The era when production was moved overseas, so businesses can take advantage of low-cost labor is coming to an end, because businesses are not only competing on price but also on time. The owner of Zara, a Spanish clothing store knows this first hand, and has turned supply chain management on its ear, making his company the “envy of the industry” (Ferdows, Lewis, & Machuca, 2004).

What is the Zara “business model”? How is it different from the business model of other large clothing retailers? What weaknesses, if any, do you see within this business model? Is it scalable?

Zara is a high-end street store offering the latest tastes in fashion for women, men, and children alike. Amancio Ortego, Zara’s founder, has made the store grow with rapid success in both its home country, Spain, and internationally. One of the distinct reasons why Zara is such a unique company compared to its competitors is its foundation of the quick response system. Today, Zara’s cycle time is six weeks, in which it responds to its customers’ demand very quickly, unlike most stores that take half a year. Overall, Zara is distinct from most apparel stores in its ability to travel globally and from its international strategy.

The business idea of Zara is to link customer demand to manufacturing, and to link manufacturing to distribution. And based on this general idea, Zara has several essential elements for its business model. First, speed and decision making, which means that in the external level, Zara need to respond very quickly to demands of target customers, and always keep in style. While for the inside, Zara treasure intelligence and judgment of common employees who enjoy a great deal of autonomy. Second, its marketing, merchandising and advertising strategy. Zara does not spend on virtually advertising, while it spends heavily on stores, and no selling online because of

There vertical integration allows small batches of produce to be distributed and tested out allow them to save more money and cut inventory backlogs. Zara maintains a low cost by avoiding outsourcing (where possible) and producing all its merchandise and produce in home soil in Spain. Also Zara own many fabric dying, cutting and processing equipment that provided Zara added control and flexibility to adopt new trends on demand. Effectively Zara is able to design and manufacture products as well as deliver them in less than two weeks in contrast to competitors such as Benetton and H&M which require at least between five weeks and 4 months lead time to fill orders from its retail operations. One major unique characteristic was that Zara own its in house production which gives Zara the flexibility of quantity, variety, and the frequency of the designs they produce.

Zara International is considered a high end clothing store that is affordable. Due to its quality in fashion, low prices and immediate availability, popular stores such as Gap and H&M fail to keep up with Zara’s success. Zara’s well known tactic of fast fashion has separated them from their competition. The ‘fast fashion’ objective is to distribute top trends of fashion within the runway to customers by selling them in local stores. Zara has been able to achieve the fast fashion perspective by hiring approximately 200 people that will assist in getting these trends out in stores within a matter of weeks.

No business in this type of industry has total control over the market price and there are no barriers to entry and exit. Because of its monopolistically competitive playing grounds, Zara’s conduct is to increase its market power by producing demand for its heterogeneous products. Through differentiation and cost leadership, Zara attempts to increase market demand by offering new items weekly while keeping a low inventory, thus making its products unique and attractive to consumers. Because of its backward vertical integration model, Zara creates a strong synergy throughout its production process. Zara has sustained a competitive advantage globally by expanding into new markets and becoming more efficient. In a monopolistically competitive industry, Zara is expected to make profits in the short run but will break even in the long run because demand will decrease as average total costs increase. This means in the long run, a monopolistically competitive firm, such as Zara, will make zero economic profit (AmosWEB, 2001).

Zara’s strategy is to offer cutting edge fashion at affordable prices by following fashion and identifying which styles are “hot”, and quickly getting the latest styles into stores. They can move from identifying a trend to having clothes ready for sale within 30 days (whereas most retailers take 4-12 months). This is made possible by controlling almost the whole garment supply chain from design to retail.

As described by the case study, explain the supply chain for Zara from raw material to consumer purchase.

Zara’s product differentiation strategy is based on high quality and low prices. The company wants to be fashionable and desire for everyone. This is the reason of their strategy (low price and high quality).

Zara’s business model can be broken down into three basic components: concept, capabilities, and value

Quick response of Zara leads it to be successful in the fashion clothing industry. Zara adopts international strategy for its operation. With vertical integration, it benefits Zara in cost aspect, however, it involves some risks. Due to our anaylysis on Zara’s operations, some of the recommendations are made to facilitate its further improvements.

From an analytical prospective, explain how information systems relate to the way Zara runs its business. What types of systems are the most essential for this company in its current environment?

An additional method Zara utilizes to ensure the right product is produced is to constantly monitoring the sells at every store in real time through the use of computers. Sells managers are the individuals that play out this strategy. When the clothing sells well or does not sell well, they can quickly let the designers know to swiftly create new designs (“Case 3-4. Continued Growth for Zara and Inditex”, 2013). However, the competition is changing their strategies in an attempt to successfully compete with Zara. The methods that Zara has implemented to ensure fast fashion is truly fast has pressured the competition into reducing their lead times on stocking their stores (Hayes & Jones, 2006).

Zara, one of the world’s largest apparel retailers, was founded in 1975 in La Coruna， Spain. With its successful rollout in the Spanish market, it began to expand its stores around the world, and became one of the most profitable brands in the appalling market. Zara was famous for its ability to quickly respond to the market demands, which provides a useful lesson in terms of competitive advantage with its competitors. But confronting to the fast-paced and constantly changing market, if a company wants to consistently increase market share in order to survive in the competitive market, it is irrefutable that it needs to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, since the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage can be expected to lead to higher performance.