Fashion brands today are the most popular topic of discussion among all age groups. Fashion today isn’t just limited to the designer minds. It’s the talk of the town today. I am obsessed with fashion. I like to read and discuss different brands, what makes them different to each other, how they came into being and of course, and their success stories. Today I am sharing with you the incredible story of one of my favourite brands-Zara. A trip to any Zara outlet is as much inspiring as it is gifting. You get to witness the trendiest fashions on sale in the stores which is very difficult to spot in any other stores. Do you know how much work and efficiency goes into bringing these latest designs to your nearest stores within weeks of its launch? I’ll tell you how.
The Zara History
Zara is one of the world’s most successful fashion brands. The concept of “fast fashion” retail was introduced for the first time by Zara since it was founded in 1975 in Galicia in northern Spain.
Zara creates wonderful designs for all age groups and is the only brand to bring in all the new trends of fashion shows into its stores within weeks. There are a lot of factors that have contributed to it becoming one of the top brands today but the key point is that it puts its customer first. Zara takes extra care of its customers and thinks for them like what might become the season’s hit among the consumers and what wouldn’t appeal to the consumers like no other brand does.
The Success Story
The success story of Zara is also because of the small but highly efficient group of international designer’s group working together in one 20 football fields sized office in Spain, bringing in the ideas and data of varied lands to get to us the best clothes of the season.
Zara, the Spanish mega-chain is owned by Inditex. Zara was originally founded by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera. Although its first shop mainly featured look-alike designs of other high-end fashion retailers. The chain was named Zara by Amancio Ortega because the name he had thought about, i.e. Zorba which is a Greek word, meaning “to live each day” was already taken. Gradually the store gained pace and became popular among Spanish consumers, and then within next 9 years, Zara opened 9 new stores in the big cities of Spain.
In 1985 Ortega created a new system, in which new fashion trends were instantly manufactured for the masses. He invested in information technology and new designers to create the latest fashions and produce them in the stores in no time. This came to be known as, “instant fashion”. Within the next decade, Zara expanded its global market extensively and opened stores in almost all cities in America, Mexico and Europe. Today there is hardly any city without a Zara store in it. Its ubiquitous presence has made it accessible to different masses and also made them fashion conscious. The present data states that today there are over 2100 Zara outlets in almost 88 countries. Today Zara is one of the leading fashion retailers and its founder Amancio Ortega the second richest man in the world.
The Business Strategy
Zara follows the concept of “fast fashion”, which means using mainstream designs from catwalk quickly and makes it available for the mass at an affordable price. It came into force from the vogue, ‘boho-chic’ in the mid-2000s. Before Zara, Benetton worked with this concept. This is also called as “disposable fashion” because it delivers designer products at an affordable price for the masses in no time. The supply chain of Zara is very vast and twice every week, the stocks are refilled everywhere. Zara produces products at a rapid pace to go with the quick tastes of consumers while the product is still in trending, it reaches the stores and that too in a cost-efficient manner. This strategy helps to not have wasted products which in turn costs heavily because then brands have to spend extra for silly advertisements. This is also called quick response (QR) method, which previously was used to improve the manufacturing process but today supports fast fashion, to decrease the time gap between design and production.
The success ladder
Zara has grown from a small Spanish city of La Coruna into the biggest fashion retailers on earth today. H&M, Primark and Gap are some of the rivals of Zara. Zara is different from all of them because in Zara there is no head designer and there is no hierarchy among designers, which helps in growth of the company because all members participate equally in the growth of the brand together. This is the reason why H&M’s profit is down due to multiple collaborations and the sale of Gap has gone down. Last year Inditex has powered ahead with an 11percent rise in revenue. To this, the CEO says that “We offer fashion to the people which have a human element to it”. Other brands of Inditex are, Bershka, Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear. Out of all, Zara accounts for two third of the sales for the company.
Slow fashion has now aroused opposing the concept of fast fashion. It criticizes the fast fashion because of poor workmanship and emphasis over briefs and neglecting the classics.
A word from the leaders
However, Isla the CEO of Zara rejects the “fast fashion” label associated with Zara, says it doesn’t reflect the detailed hard work that goes into designing clothes and the major credit goes to the wonderful supply chain management of Zara in Portugal, Spain and Morocco. Zara produces small production lines which can be tested in the market for the quick response and it does not create extra unwanted wastage, and hence reduces the loss percentage. The success of Zara comes down to its agility and flexibility. In fact, it is very essential today to adapt rapidly to the trend. This is the prime reason why retailers like; Gap, Banana Republic and J.Crew are suffering today.
So this was the inspiring story of the leading brand, Zara and how it started from a small Spanish store and changed the world with its brilliant supply and marketing strategy and carved out its niche in the global market to one of the leading brands today with ubiquitous chains across Earth.