Zara E-Business

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.

Barriers to Entry: Due to the recent recession and weak economic market, many new players have avoided entering the retail industry. Zara has taken advantage of this opportunity to be the first to enter into many markets across the world before its competitors. With the economic future improving, Zara will be facing more and more competition especially in the United States. Rather than implementing new strategies on

What makes the middle aged mother to buy cloths in Zara while the daughter aged in mid 20s buys Zara clothing? Because it is fashion able and up to trend. By collecting data and focusing on shorter response times, the company ensures that its stores are able to carry clothes that the consumers want at that time. Zara can move from identifying a trend to having clothes in its stores within 30 days. That means Zara can quickly and catch a winning fashion trend, while its competitors are struggling to catch up. Catching fashion while its hot is a clear recipe for better margins with more sales happening at full prices and fewer discounts. In comparison, most retailers of comparable size

Let us first consider Zara 's main competitive advantage before analyzing how current and potential future strategies will affect this competitive advantage. Zara currently employs a "design-on-demand" retail model allowing the company to bring the latest fashion trends from

The Porter Five Forces has been developed in 1979 to analyse industry’s affective and profitability. It is a famous tool for gaining insight into the overall fashion apparel industry and more importantly the role of Creación with a variety of key factors affecting the company itself. The Porters Five Force model comprises competitive rivalry within an industry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of suppliers and bargaining power of buyers.

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 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)

In comparison to competitors, Zara’s business strategy, in regards to strategic partnerships and cost of production, provide for a strategic competitive advantage. Zara, unlike its competitors such as Gap, Benetton, and H&M, does not use Asian outsourcing. Eighty percent of Zara’s materials are manufactured in Europe, with 50% made in Zara controlled facilities in the Galicia region of Spain near headquarters. Most of Zara’s competitors have 100% outsourcing to cheap Asian countries. Though the cost of production in Spain is 17-20% more expensive than Asia, Zara does have a competitive advantage over its competitors in regards to operations. The local strategic partnerships that Zara maintains with manufacturers in Europe allow for a product throughput time of 3-4 weeks from conception to distribution. To make this happen, the company designs and cuts its fabric in-house and it acquires fabrics in only four colours to keep costs low. The proximity of these suppliers gives Zara great flexibility in adapting their product lines based on up to date market trends and consumer behaviour. It also decreases costs of holding inventory. Zara’s competitors, through outsourcing to Asian countries such as China, sacrifice the benefits of proximity for low labour and production costs.

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

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.

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.

To better understand how Zara developed its business strategy, we should look into the fashion industry competition via Porter’s five forces model.

This is where you are able to determine the price with your suppliers. This can happen if there are a large amount of suppliers and you are buying in bulk. This may force suppliers into a price war.

Inditex itself is a huge fashion retailer company which owns 8 brands namely Zara, Pull &Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and last but not the least Uterque. Amancio Ortega is the founder of Inditex, which was established in 1963. Amancio Ortega adapted unique business model, which were innovative and flexible. This made Inditex one of the biggest retailers in the world. In 1975 Inditex established Zara’s first store in downtown A Coruna, Spain. Zara offers fashionable designs for men, women, and kids. They also sell accessories to complete their product lines.