Zara Spanish Brand of Clothing - Case Study Example

Zara Case Study The Spanish brand of clothing, Zara, establish by the visionary Amancio Ortega Gaona and Rosalia Mera in Artexio, Galicia in 1975, is one of the chief selling brands of one of the largest fashion seller Inditex. Zara has made major steps in terms of its growth and at the moment it has established its outlets in 86 countries with a total of 1,763 stores internationally. Inditex itself is a gigantic fashion retailer corporation which possesses 8 major brands. Amancio Ortega is the initiator of Inditex, which came into existence in 1963. Amancio Ortega adapted distinctive business that was as the original and flexible business replicate. This made Inditex one of the chief merchants in the world. The major branch, Zara, of Inditex was first launched in Spain in the year 1975 and has currently grown and spread to other parts like German and Portugal. Zara offers stylish designs for gents, ladies, and children. They also vend accessories to complete their merchandise (Zara, 9). The success of Zara, from operations management point of view, can be attributed to many factors as discussed in the subsequent paragraphs. In relation to design and manufacturing, Zara comes up with innovative design collections at the beginning of each season. Moreover, it continuously brings in new items with short lead times all through the year. By providing more fashionable clothes which are not readily available, the customer have limited option, and they have to move quickly in purchasing the little available stock and hence a high turnout for Zara. On the other hand, Zara strategy to embark on the vertically incorporated industrialized undertakings and well-organized production system has also enabled them increase sales. Moreover, there was extensive and equal distribution of production resources across the network of facilities all over the supply chains where errands were well segregated. As a result of this segregation, new clothing design were innovated and were afterward displayed it in its stores for vending in a month’s period span. This is a short period span and therefore, manufactured quantities can be solely based on the approximation and any alteration in the production can be made without difficulty and quickly. Secondly, Zara spent modest on advertising for its fashion. As an alternative, it has played attention on opening its stores in major city locations. Across the world, store layouts and pricing of the outfits are also homogeneous so as to reflect the main branch, the H Q in La Coruna (Zara, 9). Despite the fact that new designs were implemented every few years, Zara wished-for its clothes to have slightly short life duration of producing high quality attire. This encouraged clients to buy the clothes immediately they were available on shops. With the prior knowledge that the design possibly will not be existing on next visit and, customers visited the store often to check for new available designs. When it comes to distribution of conception stocked by Zara, Zara merged shipping across Zara’s diverse brands to trim down shipping expenses. In order to be effective, Zara combines variety of commodities in one package and in bulk. This permits Zara to initiate bi-weekly air delivery with Air France Cargo KLM Cargo. For this reason, Zara currently delivers commodities and obtain raw material and half finished attire more often, allowing them to bring new products into the bazaar at very high rate. In addition, Zara’s DCs is at the moment set to handle small-scale consumer orders to take care of Zara’s online store. In 2003, Zara simply had a website that just displayed few typical clothing at any time. Through efforts and hard work, Zara launched, in 2010, its online stores to sell clothes with increasing sales. It was able to achieve this by ensuring that the site was well known by some renowned consumers like Spain, Germany and France. The sole reason as to why they opted for this strategy was that customers have nowadays changed the way in which they shop. Customers are more attracted to online shopping because they avoid the long process of queuing that is a major characteristic of shopping in stores. Communication is very important in winning customer loyalty. Due to this, Zara’ management is extremely vertical-integrated and centralized. As aforementioned, Zara depends on direct interaction with its clients rather than incurring enormous expenses of advertising. Because of this, it has ensured that there is effective and efficient communication with its customers. Zara collects records from consumers on a daily basis, even more than a few times in a day (Zara, 9). The control center assembles client’s records from its stores across the world. They use the Personal Digital Assistants to gather instantaneous customer contribution and response and directly send it to the headquarters. Category of statistics collected by PDA may include questions like why a customer does not like the garments and what would improve it. In addition, in its day to day activities, Zara employs has installed the Point of Sale System that includes the transaction processing system that capture customer’s motive for buying the specific clothe. The POS structure gives the management of Zara an idea about how outfits rank in sales in different locations. For that reason, the headquarters can recognize their customers purchase behavior and first choice more precisely, based on their geographic locations. As to conclusion, one of the competitive lead that Zara has and its contenders deficient is the customer-sensitivity. According to the information given in the case study, Zara lacks some basic marketing skill. The author asserts that Zara does not rely much on advertising for its products. However, the brand has its unique method of interacting with potential customer at a personal level and this gives it an inch in selling it merchandise. They pay attention to their customer, any complement, comment or suggestion, from the customer, is fundamental to them. The information collected is afterward used to assess the subsequent production; this means that on the production that follows, they will produce in accordance with the information earlier given. As a result, the outcome will be rewarding for the consumers. The second viable lead that Zara has will be its trading procedure. Zara’s general business undertakings, inclusion of design process, manufacturing process, and the delivery process, all are so complicated that it make Zara becomes a lead in the designing standard attires. Zara is the only creation that has the capability to meet the demands of the customers. This is because their products are customized in accordance to customers taste and preference. In addition to that, the designs they make they ensure that is available to stores and outlets within the shortest time possible, in most cases within 14 days. Since Zara is the first one to place a certain design in the shop, clients will be inclined to make Zara their first choice in purchasing or window shopping for clothes. Lastly, the secret behind success of Zara is they the ability to produce designs in accordance to customer specifications. Works Cited A, Enrique. Zara and Her Sisters: The Story of the Worlds Largest Clothing Retailer. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print. Read More