Zara Is A Modern Day Fashion Business Model

This model was developed around late 1990s, and Zara has been at the top of this revolution along with other large retailers such as H&M and Topshop.”(From Zero to Zara: The Secret of Fast Fashion)

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.

Second, in fulfillment, we can also see speed in responding to demand. For example, the replenishment, as well as production will be optimized according to supply and demand as quickly as possible. Besides, the fulfillment will commonly completed in one or two days, clothes flowed quickly, and without stopping, from factories to DCs to stores, where they were immediately put on the sales floor. Third, in design and manufacturing, we can find how Zara respond quickly to demand. Zara brought out new items continuously throughout the year, including both changes to existing garments and entirely new creations. The network of production had made design from conception through production and into the DC in as little as three weeks. Besides, Zara did not have to predict what would be selling six months, or even one month, in the future; it could continuously sense what customers wanted to buy and respond “on the fly.” All these operations reflect the speed-chasing and target-oriented nature of Zara business.

Zara’s value proposition is that it offers its customers cutting edge fashion at very affordable prices. It actively seeks out what styles are “hot” in the fashion world. After Zara has identified the latest trend it can have the

Zara International is considered a high end clothing store that is affordable. Due to its quality in fashion, low prices and immediate availability, popular stores such as Gap and H&M fail to keep up with Zara’s success. Zara’s well known tactic of fast fashion has separated them from their competition. The ‘fast fashion’ objective is to distribute top trends of fashion within the runway to customers by selling them in local stores. Zara has been able to achieve the fast fashion perspective by hiring approximately 200 people that will assist in getting these trends out in stores within a matter of weeks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

The brand is well-known for its capability to distribute new clothes to the stores “fast and in a small batch, twice a week”, the store managers order clothes and other items, on a schedule that they follow in all Zara stores, so the new garments arrived just in time. To reach this Zara controls most of its supply chain than the majority retailers do. On opposed to H&M, Zara keeps a nearly all of its production in-house.For Zara, the supply chain is its competitive advantage. In house production allows it to be elastic in the quantity, occurrence, and multiplicity of new products that are gone to be launched. Zara commits only 15 to 25% of a season’s line. And it curls in only half of its line by the launch of the season, sense that up to 50% of its garments are designed and manufactured during the season. If items become highly popular all of the unexpected, Zara respond directly and create a new design in that popular style, so that gets new stuff into stores while the trend is still

In recent year, Zara is well-known as the world’s largest retailer and the most favorite fashion brands in the world to the people in their 20s-30s and children. Its success doesn’t come from just only what it sells but how it sells them.

The aim of this report is refer to operation management concepts and theories about Zara. This report broadens the fashion industry horizons, mainly subject of an investigation the "Fast Fashion". Definition Fast Fashion explained as a stream having more fashion cycles of chronic fashion cycle followed by high fashion houses. The function on which is based the Fast Fashion is faster and repetitive consumerism clothes so anytime customers to feel that they are in vogue. This model, which is known as Quick Response finds response by large companies like Zara, referred to in more detail in the working. The background of today's society is clearly consumer. Made ambitious efforts by corporations around the world, in order to meet the

Enforcement of such system “fast fashion” is too good in decreasing the time of production. This is clear in the case of Zara as recognizing the required fashion and applying or producing it in a short period of time less than two weeks. This is too good for forming rapid answer for all clients’ requirements, and so keeping clients satisfied. This system of fast fashion also helped Zara to produce more effective styles. This included the production of 11,000 items, while in case of rivals we find that Gap produced only 4,000 items, and H&M produced only 2000 items. Moreover, the adopting of such system helped the company reduce level of supply “scant quantities”, and this is too effective for satisfying clients as they wear a unique model. All those issues helped Zara to support its name in the market, and so despite of the different disadvantages, we find that Zara will

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