Supply Chain Management Practices of Spanish Garments Retailer Zara,

Zara is a name that seems to always come up when people talk about Spanish fashion. It is one of Spain’s most famous clothing brands and Zara stores can be found all over the world. The company was founded in 1975 by Amancio

Therefore it has become crucial to have an agile and responsive supply chain set up for both these companies. The main objective of the strategy is to reduce the lead times related to the process of getting new designs with good quality and right price into the retail stores in order to have the ability of responding to new market conditions and fashion trends. To achieve these objectives, Zara and Benetton have set up some supply chain strategies that resemble each other in many ways; they both focus on delivery, flexibility, efficiency and responsiveness to the production requirements of the company. Moreover, Zara controls every step of the value chain, closing information loop quickly, leveraging ownership of own asset, even trades off cost benefits to increase responsiveness of total system. In production stage, Zara has smaller batch productions compared with Benetton, this leads to a faster inventory turnover and quick response for Zara which is also equivalent of manufacturing's JIT to the retail sector. On the other hand, Benetton has based its supply network on two models of Industrialized Model and Commercial Model, sometimes referred as a dual supply chain. These models use two ways of planning. One is sequential approach aimed at minimizing costs and

Zara is an apparel company and the leader brand of the Spanish retail mogul, Inditex. zara was established in 1975 in Spain by Amancio Ortega who is currently the 3rd richest man in the world, the first store was opened as an outlet but by 1979 the establishment already had six stores at different locations in Spain and by 1985 the company branched out to Portugal new york city and Paris. Today Zara has over 1900 stores worldwide which are located in 22 different countries; these stores render employment to over 125,000 employees. Zara depends on information they gather from customer and organizational feedback from all their stores on a daily basis this information is then forwarded to the supply chain, which works in synergy with the stores to keep the level of storage in stores down to a minimum. Zara owns the production, supply chain and in-house production, which lead to greater speed in output (M.A.Cano)

Zara is a brand widely known across the globe for its unique fashionable cloths .It is a part of inditex which is known as one of the world’s largest distribution group in the world and the owner of the company is Spanish businessman named Amancio Ortega .This company was formed in 1963 as a fashion retailer for women clothes but the company became a success after the addition of a new brand named Zara in 1975 .Today Zara is amongst one of the largest international company producing the fashionable clothes. After the success of the inditex as a successful brand (ZARA) maker, inditex was able to expanded itself with more successful brands across the world in different countries at the end of the 1980.from 1976 to 1983 Zara turned out to be a successful retailing brand and introduced itself with nine new outlets to the biggest cities of the Spain with its first headquarter in Goa. Year 1984 turned out to be the witnesses of first logistics headquarter of Zara covering a large area of 10,000 square metres. New York

Zara is the flagship brand of the Spanish fashion retail giant, Inditex, (Industrias de Deseno Texti S. A.) Founded in 1975 ; this super- heated performers in soft retail fashion market in recent years; is engaged in textile design,

Zara was founded by Amancio Ortega in 1963. The business began as a small outfit producing lingerie items. The first Zara

Amancio Ortego started clothing factories in Spain, in 1963. In an attempt to integrate the manufacturing with the unpredictable customer demand, he opened the first Zara store in La Coruna in 1997. Zara came under Intidex multinational companyin 1985 and Jose Maria Castellano Rios, who shared the same opinion as Ortego that IT was important for their business, joined the company, who later became the CEO of Intidex in 1997. By 2003, Intidex had 1,558 stores in 45 countries, of which 550 were part of Zara chain.

Here we are going to discuss Zara’s supply chain or network. Design the starting point is a collaborative phase where teams of creative professionals carry out the design process and store managers who act as trend spotters and report everyday to headquarters. When it comes to materials Zara’s supply chain is unique where they make 40 percent of their own fabrics. As for cutting they produce more than half of its own clothes and even things that are farmed out are done locally to maximize time efficiency. Zara cuts fabric in-house and then sends the cut designs to one of several hundred local

The Zara's Fashion stores and on understanding the impact of purchasing of supply chain strategies. Further Zara Fashion Stores facing no doubt many Disadvantages in their distribution systems, however, these advantages are offset by the advantages. While ZARA strategies of vertical and horizontal integration also giving the great competitive advantageous.

In 1988, Zara opened its first abroad store in Portugal. The geographic and cultural proximity of the two countries facilitate the business. Later on, more stores were opened regardless of the geographic or cultural distance as the business grew bigger. While there were some areas or countries difficult to enter. For instance, Saudi Arabia, Andorra or Malaysia, countries predicted with small markets and low sales or great culturally distant, Zara franchised as their own subsidiaries regarding the product, store location, interior design, logistic and human resources (Flavian, 2000).

Consequently, Zara has become Spain best known fashion brand. The company started in 1963 .half century later , it has become own of the world's fastest growing manufacturer of affordable Spanish fashion clothing .currently there are around 2000 stores in 77 countries .

Collaboration of chief tasks, strategic use of organizational resources and core competencies contribute to Zara’s competitive advantage. Zara follows vertically integrated supply chain so it exercises control over suppliers. Demand is easily met and manufacturing is easily achieved. It uses Vertical Marketing System (VMS). It has Zara successfully integrate design, production, distribution, and retailing and which has turned it into the world’s fastest-growing fashion retailer. Its design team is having skilled and talented and experienced staff and the designers are regularly updated by stores and sales staff which keep record of moving stock. Its in-house team of production department is also hardworking and producing clothes quickly as it is manufacturing clothes in small batch. The market survey said that people visit Zara often when compared to Zara’s competitors. Its employees wait for one week for selling its stock and meanwhile if stock is not sold then they just take it out from store and then design team try to make better design for customer satisfaction and the design which is not sold their production will be stopped and in this manner it will face only little cost but will be able to attract customers. So its vertical integration system is helping it to gain advantage. Its customers are well aware that its stock will be changing after every week so they visit quite often to this store as they know if they don’t visit regularly then they can miss good stuff and good designer clothes. In the market survey it has been revealed that in Spain top branded fashion store is visited by customers 3 times a year and whereas Zara is visited by its customers 17 times a year so it is clear that Zara is taking advantage of vertical integration (Christopher,

Zara, the world largest clothing retailer brand that is part of the Inditex multinational clothing company which was created by Amancio Ortega and Rosalia Mera (Inditex, brands). They are based in the northwest of Spain. Currently, Zara has a total of 2,000 stores in major cities around 88 different countries (Inditex). They are acclaimed as a fast fashion company in the industry with more than two hundred professional designers within the creative teams. Zara’s products are diversification strategy, include men’s and women’s apparels and accessories that keep up with the current fashion trend (Inditex).

Zara is a Spanish brand of clothing founded by the visionary Amancio Ortega Gaona and Rosalia Mera in Artexio, Galicia. Zara was founded in the year 1975. It is one of the major selling brands of one of the biggest fashion retailer "INDITEX". Zara is now available in 86 countries with total of 1,763 stores worldwide.

Amancio Ortega, had a simple idea of linking customer demand to manufacturing and manufacturing with distribution, when creating ZARA in 1975 in la Coruña, Spain Zara came under the holding company Inditex in the year 1985 and is today the biggest fashion brand of the group. Zara believes that the prime factors for running a successful business are quick response to customers, use of computers, and disintegrated decision-making (McAfee, Dessain, & Sjoman, 2007)