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retail
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Zara is the flagship brand of the Spanish retail group, Inditex SA,
one of the super-heated performers in a soft retail market in
recent years. When Inditex offered a 23 per cent stake to the
public in 2001, the issue was over-subscribed 26 times raising
Euro2.1 billion for the company. What makes Inditex so tasty?
Well, for a start, it seemed to show higher profit margins than
comparable retailers, and secondly, the trend seemed sustainable.
Good bet for most investors.
The Awkward Factor in the Profitability Formula
Buy low, sell high. Buy on credit, sell on cash. Retail profitability
often seems like a no-brainer.
If you sell at X dollars and buy at Y dollars, as long as your
operating and financial costs are lower than the gross margin i.e.
the difference between X (selling price) and Y (cost), you should
be making money. And what with retailers running around with
gross margins of 50-60 per cent (that is more than half of their
retail price), making money should be no problem, right?
Wrong. In highly perishable goods such as fashion products that
are susceptible to seasons, gross margin is meaningless if the
product does not sell as planned. In simple terms, you make
more money if you sell more, even at a lower margin 30 per cent
on sales of Rs. 100 is better than 60 per cent on Rs. 10. Given
the unpredictability in fashion, it is quite likely that you will end
up selling a large proportion of your products at a discount. For
many retailers, 35-40 per cent of the total merchandise being
sold at hefty discounts is quite the norm.
Imagine fashion clothing to be like vegetables, or bread. On the
first day it looks very appetising and has lots of buyers. By the
Amancio Ortega Gaona, the founder of Inditex,
thought that consumers would regard clothes as a
perishable commodity just like yogurt, bread or fish
to be consumed quickly, rather than stored in
cupboards, and he has gone about building a retail
business that provides freshly baked clothes.
second and third day it starts to look stale, but customers may
still pick it up, maybe at lower prices. By the time a week is over,
the retailer is probably better off giving the bread away just to
clear up space.
Working with him in the last few years, Inditex Chief Executive
Jos Mara Castellano is quoted as saying, ''This business is all
about reducing response time. In fashion, stock is like food. It
goes bad quick.''
Zara, which contributes around 80 per cent of group sales,
concentrates on three winning formulae to bake its fresh
fashions:
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like, what fabric it will be made out of, what it will cost and at
what price it will sell.
The designer then actually sketches the garment out, details the
specifications and prepares the technical brief. Since fabrics and
trims are already in Zara's warehouse, sampling takes very little
time. Approvals are equally quick, since the entire team is
located in the same place.
As soon as approvals are received, instructions are issued to cut
the appropriate fabric. The cutting is done in Zara's own hightech automated cutting facilities. The cut pieces are distributed
for assembly to a network of small workshops mostly in Galicia
and in northern Portugal these 350 workshops between them
employ some 11,000 apparently grey-economy workers. None of
these workshops are owned by Zara. The workshops are
provided with a set of easy to follow instructions, which enable
them to quickly sew up the pieces and provide a constant stream
to Zara's garment finishing and packing facilities. Thus, what
takes months for other companies, takes no more than a few days
for Zara.
Finally, Zara's high-tech distribution system ensures that no style
sits around very long at head office. The garments are quickly
cleared through the distribution centre, and shipped to the stores,
arriving within 48 hours. Each store receives deliveries twice a
week, so after being produced the merchandise does not spend
more than a week at most in transit.
Information Technology Keeps It Boiling
Information and communications technology is at the heart of
Zara's business.
Four critical information-related areas that give Zara
its speed include:
Quick decisions
A HQ regional managers collect
and analyse the feedback.
Market
research on
university
campuses,
discos & other
venues
Line in Stores
Distribution
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Timeline
1975
ZARA begins its activity with the opening in A Corua (Spain)
of its first store, although the origins of the Group date back to
1963, the year in which Amancio Ortega Gaona, chairman and
founder, begins his business activity.
1976
GOASAM is founded by the owner of the ZARA stores and
continues with the opening of the first stores in Spain.
1985
The creation of INDITEX as head of the corporate group.
1988
The opening of the first ZARA store outside Spain occurs in
December 1988 in Oporto (Portugal).
1989-1990
The United States and France are the next markets in which
the Group begins its activity with the opening of outlets in New
York (1989) and Paris (1990).
1991
The birth of the PULL&BEAR chain and the purchase of 65
per cent of the MASSIMO DUTTI Group.
1992-1994