Case Study Of Zara

In the textbook, “International Retailing” by Brenda Sternquist, the company focus on the company Zara, shows the company overview from the beginning when the brand started in Spain. The study describes the company’s international expansion, business systems, production, and distribution within the U.S. markets. Zara is part of a parent company called, Inditex Group which is centralized in Spain. At first, Zara started as a lingerie company and quickly expanded into three sectors of fashion as a women’s, men’s and children’s fashion brand. Zara takes pride in their private label, which keeps their brand image high and keeps advertisement costs low, which also drive their company profit margin. They also depend on the fast turn around in the products to keep their stores efficient and exclusive. Zara’s turn around time, a total of three weeks, keeps their customers motivated to shop in their stores often to get the trendiest and newest fashions. They have limited new items on their shelves and sell out within two days, which create exclusivity to customers and low amounts of markdowns or discounts on their items. Zara keeps a centralized distribution system and make about 10,000 items per year. Zara’s international expansion began in 1988 when they first opened a store in Portugal and used a strategy of expanding one store per country each year. During expansion, Zara really focused on opening flagship stores in major cities before expanding into nearby and smaller cities. All Zara stores in Spain are wholly owned stores, but the company has also incorporated joint ventures and franchises in specific countries such as Russia and China for parts of their expansion to enter markets. Currently, Zara is in 60 countries with ...

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...d in Romania in the coming weeks as well as South Korea and Mexico in the Autumn or Winter of 2014.” (Evigo). Zara’s first online stores launched in 2010 and the company does not look to be slowing down any time. With net sales increasing slowly in 2013, the focus will be widely on opening new stores.

In other news, the renewal of the image has continued throughout Zara stores in all major global cities. The Inditex website’s news article states, “All the new openings and refurbishments have implemented Inditex’s eco-efficient standards, which now cover more than 2,200 of the Group’s stores worldwide.” (Inditex). The Zara brand is incorporating a more economically friendly shopping environment and promotes environmentally friendly campaigns to drive sustainability from its stores to the industrial and logistics facilities through the complete supply chain.