Inditex

Inditex (Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A.) is a spanish company which has become one of the world’s leader in the fashion industry, with eight commercial formats: Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe. It currently has expanded to 78 countries with over 5000 stores in the world.
It’s headquarters are in A Coruña and it was founded by Mr.Amancio Ortega, a businessman who knew how to change the traditional fashion industry into a modern one by adapting to the demand of the fashion consumers.
Zara -its main shop chain- has achieved worldwide renown and each day millions of consumers go into one of its stores to buy or only to watch, as they relate the brand to fashion and latest trends.

Concerning its beginnings and expansion:HISTORY

The beginning of Zara

Amancio Ortega established his first clothing company in 1963 under the name GOA. The sales of the firm grew smoothly and he opened new factories in order to get more capacity and versatility. The company soon started to export its product to the European market.

In the beginning the company was only a clothes wholesaler, but in 1975 its commercialstrategy changed: they wanted to sell their product themselves in order to control their production, distribution and sales. Therefore the firm opened its first store in a main street in A Coruña (Spain). The name of this first shop was Zara.

They sold urban clothes at competitive prices and due to the success selling young clothes for students, they decided to open more shops.

In 1976 thecompany GOASAM is constituted as the owner of the Zara shops in order to differentiate the activities of the group: GOA would be responsible for production and wholesaler sales management while GOASAM would be engaged in marketing the clothes through the Zara shops.

The plan was to open Zara stores in the main cities of Galicia and later in the rest of Spain. The chain of stores grew so quicklythat it lead to create Inditex as head of the group of companies in 1985.

One of the main features of the success of Inditex lies in the fast opening rate of its stores and the growth of its sales: more buyers means more cash flow which is invested in opening more stores.

Along 1986 and 1987 they settled down a new and modern logistic system which was capable to serve their shops in a recordtime: in less than 24 hours in Europe and in less than 48 hours in the rest of the world. Due to this system they continued its strong expansion plan.

In 1988 Inditex opened its first shop abroad in Porto (Portugal) and followed by New York and Paris in 1989 and 1990 respectively.

Once the growth was unstoppable, it entered into new markets such as Mexico, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Maltaand Cyprus.

Since 1991 the expansion plan included the creation of a new chain of stores (the new brands of Inditex) and the acquisition of another existing ones:

Pull & Bear (created in 1991)
Massimo Dutti (100% purchased in 1995)
Kiddy’s class (created in 1995)
Bershka (created in 1998)
Stradivarius (purchased in 1999)

With this acquisitions the total number of stores owned by thegroup grew significantly.
In addition to the purchase of these new chains, new logistic platforms along Spain were also opened.

The consolidation of its international expansion

At the end of the 90’s Zara’s target markets included countries such as Argentina, Japan, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Bahrein and so on.

Inditex starts the new centuryopening a new headquarters building in A Coruña. The company continues expanding internationally coming into new countries as Andorra, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Luxemburg and many other. Consequently the international sales have been growing more than the Spanish sales.

Due to the fact that many countries protect their fashion market by restricting and controlling the entry of foreign...