Zara

PRESS DOSSIER

PRESS DOSSIER

The first Zara store opened in 1975 in A Coruña (northwest Spain), where the Group’s business began and where it is still headquartered. Inditex Group stores are today found in all of the world’s major cities, always in major shopping areas.

Inditex has been listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange since 23 May 2001, following an IPO which generated greatinterest among investors worldwide, with shares some 26 times oversubscribed. Inditex shares are also quoted on leading Spanish and international stock indexes.

(1)

INDITEX

Inditex has grown dramatically in recent years, achieving consolidated turnover of 13,793 million euros in 2011, and net profit of 1,932 million euros. As of 31 January 2012, the Group had 109,512 employees worldwide. Inditex,one of the world’s largest fashion retailers, has more than 5,000 stores in 85 markets worldwide. In addition to Zara, the largest of its brands, Inditex owns other concepts: Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe. The Group also encompasses more than 100 companies engaged in a range of activities in the textile and fashion design, manufacturing anddistribution businesses. Its unique management model, based on innovation and flexibility, and its vision of fashion (creativity and quality design, together with a rapid response to market demands) have enabled its rapid international expansion and excellent performance at its commercial concepts.

Fiscal year
Turnover* Net Profit* Number of stores Number of countries Employees

2011
13,793 1,9325,527 82 109,512

2010
12,527 1,732 5,044 77 100,138

11/10
10% 12% 483 5 9,374

Zara. New Delhi

The Inditex financial year runs from 1 February to 31 January of the following year * in millions of euros.

(2)
(1) Stradivarius. Milan. Corso Vittorio Emanuele II (2) Zara. Tokyo. Ginza

(3)

(4)

(3) Massimo Dutti. Casablanca. Boulevard Al Massira Al Khadra (4) Zara Home. Barcelona.Portal de l’Àngel

Zara. London. Oxford Street

The Business Model
The Inditex business model is characterised by a high degree of vertical integration. It is involved in all stages of the fashion process: design, manufacture, logistics and distribution to its own managed stores. It has a flexible structure and a strong customer-centric focus across all of its business areas. The key elementfor the corporation is the store, a carefully designed space designed to make customers comfortable as they experience our collections. It is also where we obtain useful information for adapting our collections to customers’ tastes. The key to this model is the ability to adapt our merchandise to customer tastes in the shortest time possible. For Inditex, speed is the No. 1 priority, above andbeyond production costs. Vertical integration enables us to shorten turnaround times and achieve greater flexibility, keeping merchandise stock and fashion risk at a minimum.

Design
The success of Inditex’s collections lies in our ability to spot and adapt to rapidly changing trends in fashion, designing new items constantly to satisfy customers’ cravings. Inditex uses its flexible business modelto adapt to changes occurring within each season, reacting swiftly to deliver new product to stores in the shortest time possible. The merchandise for each season -over 30,000 items last year- are developed in their entirety by creative teams at each concept. More than 300 designers -200 of them at Zara alone- draw their main inspiration from both prevailing trends in the fashion industry andcustomers themselves, through feedback received from stores.

Manufacturing
A significant share of manufacturing is done at the Group’s own factories, which primarily produce the most fashion-forward garments. The Group directly controls fabric supply, marking and cutting and the final finishing of garments, while subcontracting the garment-making stage to specialist firms located predominantly in the...