Case # 4 – Zara
Zara is the flagship company of Inditex, an international clothing retailer. Zara began its business as a small retail store in Spain founded by Amancio Ortega Gaona in 1975. In the following decades Zara has grown to nearly 450 store location in 29 countries by the year 2000. Zara consistently accounts for more than 80% of Inditex’s net sales as indicated by Figure 1; linking the success of Inditex to the success of the strategies of Zara.
Figure 1 Inditex Net Sales by Concept
The success of Zara is linked to its vertical integration strategy with local sourcing that differentiates it from other international clothing retailers.
Sourcing Strategy
Zara uses a combination strategy when sourcing their
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It is necessary to have plans in place and implement them as soon as feasible. Zara has to send several deliveries in a week to update its styles in stores. Zara has to produce different styles of current fashion trend; this helps Zara to become fashion forward merchandise.
The biggest contributors to Zara’s success in regards to their replenishment strategy are the in-house manufacturer and the owned retail stores. This allows for the vertical integration of their supply chain, improving communication and reducing a potential bull-whip effect. Two shipments are made every week, by trucks for Europe and by air transport for stores outside Europe.
Future Strategy
The current in-house sourcing strategy being supplemented by outsourced manufacturing can help Zara in reducing production costs. A closer look at the financial metrics of Inditex provides some insight into the impact of the strategies of Zara to date. Figure 2 shows four profitability metrics for Inditex from 1996 to 2000. The return on equity has held consistently above 20% from 1997 onward. There is also a general upward trend across the other 3 metrics highlighting the continued growth relative to the success of cost cutting measures.
Figure 2: Profitability Measures
Another area of finical metrics to consider is the review of the degree of leverage Inditex
Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Arteixo, Galicia, and founded in 1975 by Amancio Orteg. It is the flagship chain store of the Inditex group, the world's largest apparel retailer. Zara describes its business as “The fast fashion” model which abandoned the traditional model of seasonal lines using instead adapting the creative ideas to customer demand on a going basis. Fashion clothes are like food, it turns bad quick. Zara’s business is about reducing response time. Zara needs about two week to develop a new product and gets it to stores. The company launches around 12,000 new designs each year. Zara’s success offers us some instructive lessons in how to create and sustain a break through strategy.
Zara has its own railway track on which the goods move to the distribution centre. Its distribution facility functions with minimal human intervention and optical reading devices sort out and distribute thousands of clothing an hour. (Ray, 2010) Zara business model differentiates it from the competitors. It is positioned on high quality and low
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 is a Spanish clothing and accessory retail company founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera. It is the main brand of the Inditex group, the world's largest apparel retailer. Zara also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, and Uterqüe. 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. Zara, as of 2017, manages up to 20 clothing collections a year.
The core concept of Zara 's business model is they sell "medium quality fashion clothing at affordable prices", and vertical integration and quick-response is key to Zara 's business model. Through the entire process of Zara 's business system: designing, sourcing and manufacturing, distribution and retailing, they presented four fundamental success factors: short cycle time, small batches per product, extensive variety of product every season and heavy investment in information and communication technology. These four elements are involved in every aspect of the business.
Zara is a clothing company that was founded in 1975 and came from Spain. Its under Inditex group which owns other brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, Oysho, Uterques and many more companies. Zara grew very fast and currently in 2012 has 1,617 stores worldwide. With a large name in the fashion industry, besides that, Zara faces tough competition internationally including H&M, Benetton, and GAP. In order to keep up with the speed chic, Zara need to keep up also with the information system to run their business.
In my point of view, the most famous way of ZARA strategies in doing their business has a huge linkage with lean which is the fast fashion. ZARA implement just in time strategy to keep their stock low, which decreases the waste of overproducing and inventory. They will only produce the product in the small batch to see whether it going to sell well or not and if the product is well sell they will produce them again but if it not they will have low failure-cost. By resulting of having just the stock they need, ZARA can make a new product more often, and when customer come in they will see a more new fresh product which will make customer come to their store more often. Also, they need not to do discount much or have their product unsold or to be the deadstock much lead them to gain a better margin. Also with one of Zara most famous key of their business “fast fashion”, which according to what Mr. Ortega the owner of Zara said in the book “Secret of Zara”, he said that when there are a new design ZARA want them to be able to launch in just for 2 week to make that item latest fashion product in that time. So, making a small amount of product will help them to make the new design product faster. ZARA is using vertical integration by implement in-house design, production, distribution and retailing instead of being like their competitor that
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.
This is because the global apparel market is heavily dominated by a few chains of retail store including Topshop and Gap. Zara is part of the Inditex Group, which means it can be able to benefit from the groups economies of scales. All these shows that new entrants may find it difficult to penetrate and outdo the companies at the top.
Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Arteixo, Galicia. Founded by Amancio Ortega and Rosalia Mera in 1975, it is the main brand of the Inditex group and also the world’s largest apparel retailer (Inditex). It is one of the first store’s to showcase low-priced look alike products of high-end clothing brands. Later on, it was viewed as an ‘instant fashion’ company as it revised its logo, manufacturing, and distribution process along with improvements that included information technology and the use of designer groups instead of individuals. Beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability; over the years it has remained loyal to its core values expressed in these 4 simple words. With its current portfolio of 2,169 stores worldwide, Zara generated revenue of about US$15.9 billion in 2016. Its target market is young, price-sensitive, and highly responsive to the latest trends (Harbott). They hold a strong competitive advantage over other retailers because they don’t define their target market on the basis of age or lifestyle segmentation, providing them a relatively broader market to target.
Zara owns both its production and retail units which give the upper management a better overall control. They have successfully integrated Information Technology into their business model. They also have great international growth selection
Thirdly, it is unique that Zara spends money on marketing, but concentrates on opening new stores instead. For their business model, Zara has a competitive advantage in areas of development, marketing, cost of production and IT infrastructure. Zara gives power to their store managers in deciding what to display and what to sell in the stores based on market research done by the headquarters. Then managers are able to order clothes to meet customer’s demand. For product development, managers need obtain the standardized information from the market or customer feedback by using a handheld device. Then send it back to headquarters for further market research. As a result, the headquarters can have a more effective plan for design and production. In reality, this allows Zara to produce around 11,000 new styles per year, while their competitors can only produce 3,000-4,000. Zara’s speed makes its product development outstanding from the market and it is important for future success. In the area of marketing, Zara only spends 0.3% of their total revenues for marketing expenses, while their competitors spend 3-4% on average. Moreover, Zara focuses on attracting customers by having a good choice of location for visibility marketing, store layout and the styles of product. For example, Zara has new styles of clothes every week and often not restocked, customers will then be attracted to visit the stores every week to
With annual growth of around 20 percent in both sales and number of stores, Zara was finding that strategy increasingly difficult to execute. Part of the Inditex group of fashion distributors, it currently has more than 1,100 stores in 68 countries. With so much volume flowing through the supply chain, the