Today the company "Zara" is known to almost every person. The distribution network offers a very large selection of products for its customers and boasts an affordable pricing policy. The company quickly and easily responds to customer requests. It is not surprising that beautiful clothes are so popular among average citizens. "Zara" - the brand of which country? Who is its founder? What is the story of creation? You can find answers to these and other questions about the Zara company in this article. Under the fashionable Spanish brand, clothes for men, women and children are produced. In addition, products such as shoes, accessories, underwear and perfumes are produced.
A few words about the founder
The largest company that worries about its customers and at the same time manages to follow fashion trends is Zara. Whose brand, who stands at its origins? This question interests many mods. Amancio Ortega Gaona is the founder of the network. He was born in a small Spanish town and spent his childhood in poverty. When the boy was 14 years old, he moved with his family to the province of Galicia. There he got a job as an apprentice to an Italian fashion designer. In 1972, as a thirty-seven-year-old man, Amancio Ortega opened his own knitwear factory.
"Zara." Start
The history of the Zara brand began in 1975. It was then that Amancio Ortega, together with his first wife, Rosalia Meru, opened his own small store. It was located on the main street of La Coruna. The future mogul of the fashion industry wanted to name his Zorba store, as his favorite film was “The Greek Zorba”. But there were problems with registration, and Amancio had to change the name to ZARA.
Incredibly successful ideas of a Spanish businessman
Gaona got ahead of the Chinese and was the first to realize that producing copies of the best things from world famous couturiers is a good and most profitable business. Moreover, such clothes will cost much cheaper. And this means that the average consumer is sure to "bite" on fashionable clothes at a low price. Amancio's concept has been very successful. The Zara brand quickly became popular. With crazy speed, outlets began to open in all corners of Spain. In the 1980s, Jose Maria Castellano joined the Ortega team. Together, friends came up with “instant fashion”, which became an innovative business system. Also, newly-minted colleagues opened their own design studio, which they called Inditex.
Production acceleration
After gaining popularity in Spain for ten years, the Zara brand began to appear on the international market. In 1988, the first store was opened abroad. He was in Portugal. But Amancio and his company still had another problem. The assortment of clothes was updated too slowly, new models came out only two or three times a year. Jose Maria Castellano, an IT expert, was able to solve this problem. He created a unique and innovative model for the manufacture and distribution of products. With the help of special computer development, the company was able to reduce the time between the production of new models and their appearance on sale. This period was only ten to fifteen days.
Design team
The Zara brand is widely known throughout the world. And this is not at all surprising. Indeed, for fast and high-quality production of products, the company's managers in the company decided to hire not one designer, but a whole internal team of stylists, which already included more than two hundred people in the late 1990s.They worked on the basis of a collection of fashionable popular clothing. In addition, the designers worked on developing their own company style. The set course made it possible to quickly respond to new consumer demands and the emergence of the latest fashion trends. Modernization of production and inventory procedures, new computer programs for accounting for goods, as well as highly qualified designers saved ZARA from any losses and accumulations of a large number of returnable clothes in warehouses.
New markets
Today, young people are very fond of and value products from the company "Zara" (the country of the brand is Spain). But this trading network was able to gain a good reputation in international markets only in 2000. In the 90s Inditex gradually filled the shelves of the USA, Mexico, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Malta and Cyprus. At the end of the twentieth century, the company began to supply its products also to Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Great Britain, Venezuela and Japan. But the market of France became the most suitable for ZARA. New outlets were quickly opened here, which were located in large cities of the country. At the beginning of the XX century, the company entered the markets of Germany, Holland, Poland, Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe.
Products
The Zara brand, whose origin is associated with many interesting facts, produces fashionable men's, women's and children's clothes. In addition, the company produces a line of shoes, cosmetics, accessories and perfumes. The main thing for ZARA designers is to focus all attention on the fashionable preferences and requirements of their customers. It is important for the company to satisfy the needs of the buyer, and not to promote new models through displays or other means of influence that are traditional for the fashion industry.
Pros "Zara"
The ZARA distribution network offers its customers a fairly wide range of products, unlike any other companies in the fashion industry. This company produces about eleven thousand various products per year, while competitors produce only two to four thousand. The company only needs one month to put the product on sale from the development stage and it takes only two weeks to make changes to the design of the already manufactured product. Zara quickly and easily responds to current customer requests thanks to the accelerated production process. If any model is not in demand, then it is immediately removed from sales. Moreover, all orders for its production are canceled, and the company instantly launches products with a new design. It is noteworthy that any product is not in stores for more than one month. For this reason, customers try to visit ZARA brand outlets as often as possible.
Company Production Capabilities
Zara is a clothing brand that is a vertically integrated retail chain. The company differs from similar distributors in that it manages the design, manufacture and sale of its products. Most of the production of goods is controlled by ZARA. Half of the goods are manufactured in Spain, 26% - in other European countries, 24% - in Asia and Africa. The company's competitors produce their products in Asia. But ZARA is engaged in the production of the most fashionable models only in its own factories, which are located in Spain and Portugal. It is in these countries that wage labor is paid much cheaper than in the rest of Western Europe. The Zara retail chain makes its production in Asia and Turkey only for the manufacture of goods such as standard T-shirts and t-shirts, since they have been on store shelves for quite some time.
Life of Amancio Ortega, creator of ZARA
Amancio Ortega is considered the most wealthy businessman in Spain. He is the person who owns the Zara brand. Now Amancio takes fourth place in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. Its capital totals sixty four billion dollars. When things were going well for Inditex Corporation, and Zara even surpassed its main competitor H&M in revenue, the founder of the company started having family problems.Amancio Ortega and his first wife, Rosalia Mera, together experienced the most difficult moments in the formation of their business. They had two children - daughter Sandra and son Marcos, who had a severe form of disability. In 1985, the couple officially terminated their relationship. After the divorce, 7% of Inditex shares went to Rosalia, who passed away in 2013, and her daughter Sandra Ortega Mera inherited her fortune. Amancio married for the second time to his assistant Flores Perez Marcote. Today they live soul to soul. They have a daughter, Marta, who works for Amancio. A few years ago, Ortega, at the age of 78, resigned as chairman of Inditex. He handed over the reins to young and enterprising people. Now Amancio leads a rather secluded lifestyle and does not communicate with reporters.
"Instant Fashion" company "Zara"
The Zara brand is part of Inditex Corporation. In the same group are such world famous brands as Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Uterque, Stradivarius, Oysho and Pull & Bear. ZARA clothing is a combination of a design approach and affordable prices. Now the clothes of this brand are the best-selling in the whole world. New clothing lines go on sale at lightning fast speed, and their updating occurs quite often. More than four hundred designers are working on creating new models. The creator of ZARA called this approach "instant fashion." Clothing does not linger on store shelves if it is not in demand. It is quickly discontinued and a new one is created. To date, one thousand six hundred ZARA stores are open in seventy-seven countries.
