Zara: Fast Fashion

Though Inditex (a global specialty retailer), Zara manufactures and sells apparel for women, men and children. But what has made Zara the prosperous company that is nowadays?

In an extremelydynamic environment where the consumer’s tastes are changing, the competitors are fighting fiercely, and the globalization and new technologies are changing the traditional market rules… Zara hasdeveloped a unique strategy that has allowed it to maintain a competitive advantage. Zara faces certain challenges to maintain these advantages:

Vertical Integration → This is an original strategy ofZara. It is the only competitor in the market that has had “the idea of combining distribution with manufacturer”. This way, Zara has been able to implement a successful merchandising strategy, whichallows them to build up a powerful and prestigious brand image. By owning its own production Zara is also able to reduce costs and provide its customers updated fashion in the amount demanded by themarket. That makes Zara one of the most flexible apparel retailers in this business. But this up/downstream strategy might be a double-edged sword. By following this strategy Zara is not able to reacheconomies of scale, so that makes ZARA´s costs higher than their competitors costs. Looking at Zara and H&M´s [Zara’s main competitor] revenues on exhibit 5, it can be seen that Inditex generates lessrevenues than H&M but, if we calculate its operating margin profit we obtain that while H&M´s operating margin is 13.7%, Zara´s operating profit margin is 21.6%.... So that means that Zara is moreefficient generating profits, and it is able to challenge this drawback by saving money in, for example, advertising campaigns. So according to all this, direct competition will be Zara´s largest threat.Unique quick response system → Appareling market is extremely dynamic, and being updated with all its clothes collections and as fast as Zara does it, is one of its most important competitive...