Swot Analysis Of Zara

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

“Zara has pioneered leading-edge fashion clothes for budget minded young adults through a tightly integrated vertical structure that cuts delivery time between a garment’s design and retail delivery to under three weeks (against the industry norm of three to six months)” (Grant, 2010, p.212)

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 was a retail shop originated in La Coruna, Spain in 1975. It was clothing and accessories shop and imitated the latest fashion trends and sold them at a lower cost. It became Zara International after entering Portugal in 1988 and then the United States and France in the 1990s. The distributor for this brand is Inditex and is considered the most successful retail chain in the world. Zara has a business strategy that is very different from the retailers nowadays. If a customer orders a product Zara’s distribution centers can have the items in the store within 24 to 48 hours of receiving the order, depending upon the country. The business plan that Zara’s executives made was very innovative and played a great part in the

ZARA is an understood Spanish garments brand well known for its high-speed answer, which is considered as a win variable for the organization and obtaining competitive edge over its rivals around the world. Style is about new and in vogue garments, ZARA's stock administration and distribution strategy are the key components behind its high-speed answer procedure. ZARA has outlets in 86 nations, including Europe, United States, Middle East and Asia. In 2012, Inditex the guardian organization of ZARA has asserted US$20.7

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.

Zarawas able to catch a trend while it was hot thus customers were willing to pay a higher premium for the product increasing their gross margin. In addition, Zara did not have to commit to its suppliers several months in advance of a season on the style and amount needed unlike its competitors. Zara was able to create in smaller batches, thus decreasing risk by limiting the amount of inventory on hand. The downside of owning and controlling production is that it often leads to higher costs of labor compared to labor in developing countries (south-east Asia). To lessen the costs, Zaradecided to outsource the main commodities of apparel such as the undyed fabric, buttons and zippers. Because these were basic ingredients to any apparel it did not affect the final product and cut down cost. Also, 85%-90% of their styles were standard across stores and countries which benefited from economies of scale. Lastly by playing both role of manufacturer and retailer Zara is able to get profits on both sides. The short-lead times provide flexibility to Zara; however, Zara needs to provide the consumer with the latest trends in order to increase profitability. Therefore, Zara invests heavily in their product development teams compared to their competitors. Extensive continual market research was performed on current trends from fashion shows, universities and key trend

The basic strategy for fighting competition is to attract buyers at lower prices, more unique designs, high-quality design, efficient customer service and solid image brand. Thus bargaining power of buyer for apparel industry is high as the products falls under the basic needs in human lives. There is no much difference in terms of products offered by the apparel company, so if buyer is unhappy with the product or service they can easily switch to another brand. Thus, Zara are trying to strengthen its position in the market by using their unique strategy by giving priority to buyer to meet their special needs.

Zara's short lead-time gives a higher chance for a more accurate predicting the next fashion. This makes them able to meet the customers demand and offer a higher level of fashionable clothes in their

In society is such opinion about prices, if the product price is low, it means that the quality is low. People think that everything with high prices has high quality, but it is not true. In this case Zara did not want to be seen as a low quality brand. Hence they create products of high quality. They wanted to be first between fashion brands and add new designs to their collections twice a week. For customers is not good to look the same designs two week, the company knows about customers needs and they remove the products that do not sell well and changes the stores’ organization twice a week. Products can be different by their functional aspects, by the price and the quality. Zara differentiates by these elements. The main point of the differentiation strategy for Zara is combination of the low price and high quality and if other companies want to be desirable, they must do the same. Zara tries to decrease the product in the inventory and increase the number of variable

Zara is unique in its marketing model as Zara has a policy of zero advertisement. Plus, its concept of fast-fashion enables Zara to produce new collections every few weeks. This stimulates customers to visit Zara approximately seventeen times during a year, opposed to the three times other, similar companies expect their customers to visit, as Zara’s products change regularly. Customers only have a short period of time to buy a specific item. The fact that Zara produces all its clothes itself, instead of buying clothes from other retailers, also makes

Another positive point of Zara, due to high frequency of changing clothes is the low risk that this report. As they change constantly the outfit, if there is a product that is working good it can be immediately replace within a maximum of one week, while in other companies, where the stock is bigger, it will need to be stored in the shops for longer time. This will carry on low inventory costs. Zara, has an agile production that focus it success in the quick response to demand even though it is no, a priori, predictable.

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 is a non-domestic retailer company that offers a wide array of clothing for young adults, children men, and women. The first company store was opened in 1975 in the nation of Spain. However, it has been able to expand its operation in other countries such as United Kingdom, India, Japan, Mexico, and Canada. Zara has been able to maintain its position in the fashion market which is highly competitive as a result of its constant and latest change in trend. The apparel market is usually driven by the consumer (Zara Website). Based on the fact that new technologies and globalization have availed to the customer enhanced and improved access to fashion, the core objective of any organization that is competing in the industries depends on the meeting the needs of the consumers. As such, Zara has focused its attempts on the evolving and developing consumer-oriented product lines as it strives in meeting the needs of customers of different income and age. The middle-aged parents purchase clothes at the retail stores because they are cheap while the children purchase merchandise from the stores for it is trendy and fashionable. The company has a wide array of clothing and product lines as per the market needs. The company has a distinct fashion approach and constant response to the ever-evolving trends. The objective of Zara is relation to combining low prices and fashion, adapting and interpreting the