Inditex, Zara

Résumé du document

José María Castellano, deputy chairman and CEO of the Inditex Group, whose brand Zara, has helped build the fashion empire to a worth of 13 billion. Zara employs around 50,000 people and takes on 7,000 new employees every year. In 2004, it opened a new store every day somewhere in the world, and has a total of 2,200 stores in 56 different countries. We are going to try to understand this huge success by answering a few questions.

Extraits

[...] Critically evaluate Inditex's international marketing strategy. According to the experts, one thing that has made the Inditex Group distinctive especially Zara is its individual marketing strategy favouring stock rotation in its shops. We think that Inditex's international marketing strategy is really rationale and efficient. Even if other companies can copy Inditex model it is very difficult to achieve a corporate culture as strong as the Inditex Group's, with a team of professionals who have accumulated a wealth of experience in highly diverse markets and who are accustomed to making decisions at the speed at which we operate throughout the world. [...]

[...] Inditex has already a significant presence in other regions of the world. (Mexico, Portugal and Spain). Inditex has also opened stores in markets that could be regarded as emerging, such as Russia, Malaysia and Brazil. In general, any country where there is an interest in fashion could be a good location for Inditex to develop business. It therefore has 300 stores in America, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and North Africa. In the U.S. Inditex is careful because the U.S. is a very large and complex marketplace. [...]

[...] First, in 1989 Inditex went to Portugal, learned a lot in how to select, penetrate and consolidate new countries. Then, because France is a fashion country, Inditex decided to penetrate this market (with ZARA) even if it will be difficult failed). But they opened stores slowly in state-of-the-art location and it's now a success In 1991, they entered into the US market and even if they made losses, they remained to build international brand awareness and to generate market intelligence by interacting with competitors Then Inditex used a joint venture to enter the Mexican market. [...]

[...] How has Inditex addressed these issues? There are first differences because of the climates. So Inditex product strategy is product for one global market” with some adaptations to suit local climates. For managers, the key lies in sharing a strong corporate culture, with a clear vision of business and objectives at all levels, so that geographical distance and cultural differences become an advantage, an element that enriches the project rather than creating difficulties. Inditex's managers believe that the first step towards unity is to share in an exciting project, one in which everybody feel as though they are playing a part. [...]

[...] To achieve its strategy, ZARA has global objectives: - need only 3 weeks to design, produce and distribute a new product to a store months for the competitors) - get information daily from every stores all over the world and secondly - no storage in the stores - integrated vertical flows of information - Be flexible and reactive to adapt and react quickly to environment fluctuations and to specific demand of the customers - . Identify the segments in which Inditex, Sara Lee and Benetton compete. [...]