[1]The
Spanish clothing and accessories retailer founded in the mid 1970s by Rosalia
Mera and Amancio Ortega. The global fashion giant has its headquarters at Arteixo
Spain and it is part of the inditex group who owns other brands like Massimo
Dutti, Pull and Bear, Uterque, Stradivarius and Bershka. Zara who started its
international expansion through Portugal in the early 1990s later entered the
USA and French market in the mid 1990s. Its international expansion was
deepened in the late 1990s where they entered the Mexican, Greece, Belgian and
the Swedish markets. Currently, Zara is present in about 73 countries, which a
huge percentage of their stores are company owned except few places where
legislation is a hindrance for foreign-owned companies; where they franchise
the stores.
The normal practice in the fashion industry in terms of new product design and getting the product into the market or stores is roughly six months that is the industry average. It is claimed by most fashion industry analyst that Zara needs only two weeks to design and develop new product and get it to its store. Consequently, Zara has resisted the normal fashion industry trend towards moving fast fashion production to relatively low cost economies and countries.
Zara's success is based on the
principles of vertical integration, quick response, in-house production, a
single centralized distribution center and a relatively very low advertisement.
The global fashion giant controls most
aspects of its supply chain; designing, manufacturing, distribution and retailing of its
products to the companies retail shops. Looking in-depth into the design strategy of Zara its focused
on the understanding the fashion items which its numerous customers wanted and
deliver to them which is contrary to the normal fashion industry strategy of
promoting predicted season’s trends through fashion shows, pageants which the
traditional fashion industry uses. They use information systems to collect
vital information for example, daily sales figures which allows its designers to
estimate what type of clothes are selling very well. Their designer also has
real-time information, which enables them to decide the type of fabric, color
and cut to use when modifying or designing new clothes.
Zara Operations Diagram
Zara team uses information systems to track sales and preference of customers by PDAs, Internet, and other sources to get customers feedback on what product they would like to see more. This intelligence gathering is lead by Zara store managers, which finally determines what ends up on the companies store racks. In effect Zara uses this valuable data to allow the company to forecast on the products to be produced rather than guesswork. The goal of the company is to improve the frequency and quality of information systems to enable them provides the best designs trends to its customers. Zara uses software’s like C-Design and Corel Draw, which allows them to create and merchandise the company’s collections efficiently and quickly.
In a nutshell, Zara’s design
and forecasting has been described by the Business-world magazine of India as
the “the fashion imitator“ whiles the Director of Louis Vuitton fashion Daniel Piette
also describes Zara as “possible the most innovative and devastating retailer
in the world“ lasting the CNN describes Zara as the “Spanish success“.
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