Zara Analysis

Introduction

ZARA is the flagship chain store for the Spanish Inditex Group owned by Spanish tycoon Amancio Ortega, who also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius and Bershka. Today, Inditex is probably the world's fastest growing clothing retailer with over 3,100 stores around the world in over 70 countries (more than four times the 2000 figure) the Zara format taking around 1,000 of those stores. In March 2006, the group overtook Sweden's Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to become Europe's largest fashion retailer.

This industry is extremely large and gathers a huge number of firms sorted in sub-categories like footwear, men/women/children clothing, fashion, et cetera. As no comparison can be made between companies of other sectors, Inditex (and Zara in particular) must be filed in the sector of fashion family clothing, which consists of the design and the retail of trendy clothes for young men and women. The direct competitors of Inditex are Gap Inc., H&M, and Abercrombie, for example. This specific sector of industry appeared by the end of the XVIIIth Century when the use of sewing machine led to the standardization of textile products. In the following century appeared several manufactures