Zara : Managing Stores for Fast Fashion - summary
1-page case summary
Zara is one of the world most famous bands in the clothing industry, pioneering by offering fashionable items manufactured quickly at reasonable price (“fast-fashion” segment), which was supported by an unmatched capability to complete production up to store delivery in a 3 weeks cycle – compared to the average 6 months of luxury brands. The chain of fashion stores is the first brand developed in 1975 by the entrepreneur Armancio Ortega Goana, founder of Inditex, now one of the world-leading fashion group with 8 well-known brands, $10 Billion in revenues, about 4000 stores and nearly 90000 employees.
The group structure is designed as such to ensure a balance between a corporate-driven control, maintained to achieve coherent brand identities and culture across all stores worldwide, and autonomy of the essential entities of the group. As a result, Inditex centralizes at the headquarters strategy, brand coordination, shared services – such as IT, global HR, logistic – and a team of in-house designers. A large autonomy at country, brand, product lines and even store level is however provided to enable for quick reaction on customer trends, rapid decision-making, continuous improvement and empowerment of the workforce, key to retain the talented people. Countries are given sufficient freedom to adapt operationally to the local variation in terms of employee, customer and store management, given respect of the fundamental values of the Inditex group - i.e. each brand manages independently its store network, logistic and production facilities. A triangle composed by commercials – responsible for the product flow in a geographical area-, brand regional managers – DTs, responsible at product line level for operations and performances of 15 stores – and the store managers captures quickly relevant information from the market and provides directions to designers in order to create or adapt the models.
Stores are the first entrepreneurial entity of
Zara is one of the world most famous bands in the clothing industry, pioneering by offering fashionable items manufactured quickly at reasonable price (“fast-fashion” segment), which was supported by an unmatched capability to complete production up to store delivery in a 3 weeks cycle – compared to the average 6 months of luxury brands. The chain of fashion stores is the first brand developed in 1975 by the entrepreneur Armancio Ortega Goana, founder of Inditex, now one of the world-leading fashion group with 8 well-known brands, $10 Billion in revenues, about 4000 stores and nearly 90000 employees.
The group structure is designed as such to ensure a balance between a corporate-driven control, maintained to achieve coherent brand identities and culture across all stores worldwide, and autonomy of the essential entities of the group. As a result, Inditex centralizes at the headquarters strategy, brand coordination, shared services – such as IT, global HR, logistic – and a team of in-house designers. A large autonomy at country, brand, product lines and even store level is however provided to enable for quick reaction on customer trends, rapid decision-making, continuous improvement and empowerment of the workforce, key to retain the talented people. Countries are given sufficient freedom to adapt operationally to the local variation in terms of employee, customer and store management, given respect of the fundamental values of the Inditex group - i.e. each brand manages independently its store network, logistic and production facilities. A triangle composed by commercials – responsible for the product flow in a geographical area-, brand regional managers – DTs, responsible at product line level for operations and performances of 15 stores – and the store managers captures quickly relevant information from the market and provides directions to designers in order to create or adapt the models.
Stores are the first entrepreneurial entity of