Zara: Fast Fashion Essay examples

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, 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.

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.

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).

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,

In conclusion, Zara’s Marketing strategy is genius. They know how to make their products attain the consumers' want, further than what they need, and create tremendous value for them. Often, Zara offers sales-off programs that reward customer loyalty as in bonding relationship with them. Zara also treasures the value of its proposition: they keep their promises by always supplying the fashionable clothes with affordable price. As the point of marketing, creating the value for customers and gaining that value from those. Zara has successfully achieved it, which is something really hard to do. Their brilliant marketing strategy has brought Zara to success, now they owns over 2,100 stores across 88 countries, and globally

Initially, the efficient supply chain of the business is a good method to enhance its competitive position. Supply chain refers to those associated operations and activities for converting inputs to outputs. Such activities contain issues of operations, marketing and supply (Han, 2008). High level of combination within the chain is the best method to get competitive benefit. Zara Company achieved matchless success in having powerful supply chain. This company owns numerous branches all around the world. In this essay, we will discuss supply chain of Zara, Zara’s Fast Fashion distribution system, and role of vertical and horizontal analysis in making competitive advantage for business.

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.

Based on Michael Porter’s universal strategy, Zara are put on board economy scope. Zara available cost leadership strategy and additionally differentiation system, combined this to win its competition. Zara play at fair price because they build cost authority strategy, consequently even they set for reasonable price they nonetheless could gain reasonable perimeter. And developing differentiation tactic enables Zara to design and end products in a much reduced time as opposed to the competitors.

Zara is a Spanish clothing brand founded in 1975 by visionary Αmancio Οrtega Gaona in Spain. Zara is one of the largest selling brands from the largest retailer of fashion "INDITEX". Zara is known chain of brands particularized into designing clothes, shoes and accessories for all genders and ages. Zara owns lots of employees (40.000) for fast clothing fabrication and shipping needs. Zara is now available in 88 countries with a total of over 2000 stores worldwide and 29 online markets (Slack, Chambers, and Johnston, 2009). Also, Zara is classified as one of the biggest and most successful companies with due to the excellent quality of products provided and the visional given attempt to compete and claim the first place on sales among other strong companies such as H&M and Gap. Of course, it cannot be neglected that Zara managed to rapidly correspond to customer's demands.

* Social - Changes in social trends and in social life can force on the demand for Zara’s products and the availability and enthusiasm people to work. The company must work in relation with costumers need, trends and demand as a result of change in generation choices. Even thought the prices of Zara are relatively low this is a very good point in their favor if they enter in Albanian market. Because Albanian people cannot afford products that have high prices. Zara can be afford from 60% of the population.

Zara is a clothing and accessories retailer selling stylish apparel at affordable prices, and it is also the most profitable brand of the Spanish clothing retail group Inditex SA. Ortega planned for this new Zara outlet, located near his factory in La Coruna in northern Spain, to sell this overstock merchandise himself. Since then, Zara has expanded into 500 stores in 68 countries as of January 2007 and has become a leader in customized fashion retailing. This assignment presents core competencies to help Zara achieve competitive advantages in fashion industry. Besides, we also offer five competitive objectives about quality, speed, flexibility, dependability and cost to evaluate

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

Even though there are threats and risks involved along with other challenges, the firms move into the direction of expansion so as to reach and to penetrate new markets segments. Zara, a vertically integrated company, yet controls most processes in the supply chain wherein 50% of its products are manufactured in Spain, 26% in the rest of Europe and 24% in Asian countries.  Although it outsourced the production of labor intensive processes, it still preserved the in-house other capital intensive processes, shielding its knowledge and know how. The quick-response capability of Zara is made possible by the three main stages that define the competitive edge of the company: design, manufacturing and distribution.

Zara’s successful fast - fashion business model also refers to its push-pull strategy in which the customer plays an active role. Zara’s design and production activity begins with customer demand in retail stores. The trend information and feedback are sent back continuously to the headquarter where designers create new designs based on the real-time data. This strategy enables Zara to get access to real demand and leverage the responsiveness to customers. A very fast and highly responsive supply chain is needed to make certain that deliveries are sufficiently frequent (Ferdows et al., 2004).