Being a victim of fashion myself, I wanted to refer back to our class discussion and article about Zara. One of the biggest problems I always face is where to spend the greater part of my allowance; Zara or H&M. After our class discussion and having read the articles I realized how productive Zara was in compare to H&M, to the point that Zara “reported 21% sales growth in 2005, to $8.15 billion. That puts Inditex ahead of H&M, which posted $7.87 billion in sales last year”, and Zara keeps growing. The secret to Zara’s success is clearly their rapid pace in reproducing items that surfaced the Grammy’s or even Madonna’s World tour in less than two weeks! So design, production and shipping happens within those two weeks. That’s fascinating, and extremely hard to copy for other stores such as H&M and Forever 21, since they have a different strategy that takes much longer. Zara’s secret number two; LARGE expansions internationally, and again at a rapid pace. Zara ” opened 448 new stores last year, while H&M inaugurated 145″,and at the end of 2010 Zara is expected to have close to 5000 stores. With Zara’s rapid expansion, and latest styles, I might have to think even harder next time I roam Robson street, because If I really wanted to be up to date on the newest styles, I might have to start visiting Zara more often than H&M.
References: https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct
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