Zara has captured the world of retail with their unique lines, innovative retail products and quick turnaround regarding the way they can churn out different lines on time and every four to six weeks.
What started off in 1975 has now grown into more than 1,560 stores. Owned by the Inditex Group who floated recently on the London Stock Exchange and developed its online presence with a new site in order to sell their lines, Zara is now present in 70 different countries with a massive 10,000 new design launches every year.
The Inditex Group consists of eight different retail sale formats, one of which includes Zara. Inditex’s motto boasts "creativity and quality design together with a rapid response to market demands.”
Moreover Zara’s operation is an extremely lean organisational framework which promotes a high level of performance. The structure also reduces the number of managerial hierarchy levels as well as decentralising decision-making.
As mentioned above it only takes around five weeks to get from design to delivery of a garment to enter into a Zara store and just a fortnight for an existing model.
This in turn means the product life cycle is short, therefore consumer needs are met more quickly. Zara also maintains a focus on gathering data and they use this technology in order to report directly to their production offices and Spanish designers.
Moreover, Zara is a vertically integrated company meaning it has significant control over several or all of the production and distribution steps which are involved in the product creation.
It is a simple supply and demand chain as Zara own their own textile house while others depend on outsourcing and cheap labour.
