The founder of the Zara chain of stores, Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, became the richest man, displacing founder Bill Gates from the first place. Ortega’s fortune in the World Billionaires Ranking, the data of which is updated in real time, amounted to $79.7 billion. Over the past 24 hours, the Spanish businessman’s fortune has increased by 5.2%, or $3.9 billion.

Amancio Ortega

The real-time Forbes World Billionaires Ranking differs from the magazine's annual ranking by updating the financial position of the world's richest people daily based on the value of stocks and other securities owned by businessmen. The agency also has a similar real-time rating. However, according to the Bloomberg Billioners Index, the Microsoft founder is almost $10 billion richer than the Spanish businessman. Thus, as of October 22, Bill Gates’ fortune is estimated at $83.8 billion, while Ortega ranks second with $75.7 billion.

Amancio Ortega owns Inditex, which has more than 6,750 stores in 88 countries and owns the famous brands Zara, Oysho, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull and Bear, Zara Home, Stradivarius and Uterque. Ortega's brands focus on the middle class and do not try to conquer the luxury clothing market. This strategy is bearing fruit: manufacturers of luxury goods are now going through difficult times, since the performance of the largest market players is affected by the economic situation in China, namely slowing demand in China and Hong Kong.

In the first half of the year, Italian retailer Prada's revenue in Asia, which accounts for 36% of all sales, fell 1.4% in local currency terms and 17.5% in constant-currency terms. courses currencies In mainland China, this figure decreased by 1.2 and 19.3%, respectively, reported.

According to LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony, the summer collapse of Chinese stock markets will also affect LVMH (the group's financial statements are due next week), although, in his opinion, the market will feel the decline in demand "for only a few months."

At the same time, the world's largest luxury goods maker said spending growth among Chinese travelers has slowed in recent months. “We are seeing more and more tourists from China, but they are spending a little less. The growth rate of purchases in the third quarter is not as high as it was in the first half of the year,” Gioni quotes. This situation comes against the backdrop of a weaker euro, which prompted Asian travelers to go on shopping sprees at the start of the year.

However, the fall in demand for luxury goods is currently affecting the British Burberry Group Plc the most, since up to 40% of its total profits come from purchases by Chinese consumers.

In the first half of the year, sales in the fashion house's Chinese and Hong Kong stores fell by 5 and 20%, respectively.

Another factor that also negatively affected the company's performance was their focus on the domestic, English market, which accounts for about 40% of European sales. Many “dollar” buyers take advantage of the weakening of the European currency and come to make purchases on the continent, notes MainFirst Bank AG.

The company said it could return to five percent growth in like-for-like sales in the second half of its fiscal year, which runs through March 2016. However, writes Reuters, whether the second quarter was unsuccessful for the company due to external reasons or whether the decline in performance could become a trend is still unclear.

24.05.2014 / 530

Interesting information about the Zara TRF brand. Reference data about the Zara TRF trademark.

The success of the brand was ensured by a special concept developed by its founder.

Whose brand is Zara?

The secret is that Zara designers are focused on copying the most successful models from leading fashion houses. There were no expenses for advertising and product demonstration, which had a beneficial effect on the price of the final product.

The Russian brand ZARINA is known all over the world to the fair sex. In St. Petersburg in 1993, the company Pervomaiskaya Zarya CJSC for the first time in Russia began producing fashionable women's clothing. A company store called “Zarina” opens, through which its products are sold.

The best fashion designers of the city were brought in to create the collections.
The production of models for obese women called “Big Beautiful” has been launched. The brand is winning the love of many women. So in 1995, the Club of Regular Customers appeared, which today unites about 10,000 women. Since 1997, the collection of plus size clothing has become known as “Zarina-Plus”.

In 2002, the ZARINA company logo was registered, large investments began to be made, fashion shows were held, and the first online store for wholesale buyers was opened. In 2005, the fashion direction was separated from the business of Pervomaiskaya Zarya CJSC and Melon Fashion Group OJSC was formed.

What You Were Afraid to Ask: What the TRF Section at Zara Really Means

Since 2006, an international group of designers and fashion designers, led by French fashion designer Jeanne Philippe Boyer, has been working on the creation of fashionable clothing. With the participation of Russian designer Irina Melnikova and fashion designer Susan Lassen from Denmark, the fit of the models was developed taking into account the features of the figures of Russian women.

Annual seasonal collections are presented according to the wardrobe principle, where all clothing models are combined with each other within the collection and with outfits from previous seasons. This allows you to create a variety of clothing combinations, complementing them with stylish Accessories within the collections. This approach allows customers to look fashionable and modern while saving money.

ZARINA today

More than 130 branded stores have been opened in many regions of Russia, where models of different styles and colors are presented. Therefore, it is easy for the buyer to choose an elegant item in her favorite style: business (Business), casual (Basic) or classic (Zoom). The age category that stylish clothing is aimed at is a confident middle-aged woman who prefers a classic style. Since 2012, Flash models have been developed for a young and dynamic target audience. ZARINA helps every woman create her own unique image.

Zara, the leading retail chain of the Inditex Group, is owned by Spanish tycoon Amancio Ortega, who also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Oysho, Uterque, Stradivarius and Bershka. The head office is located in A Coruña, Spain, where the first store was opened in 1975. It is claimed that Zara takes just 2 weeks from design development to launching a new line, compared to the industry average of 6 months. Moreover, more than 10,000 new designs are developed throughout the year.

Zara was able to resist the widespread trend in the clothing industry to locate production facilities in countries with low production costs. Perhaps they chose the most unusual strategy - rather than spending on advertising, the company chose to invest part of the profits in opening new outlets.

Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette described Zara as "Perhaps the most innovative and disruptive retail chain in the world." Zara has also been described by CNN as a "Spanish success story".

The founder of Zara, Amancio Ortega, opened the first Zara store in 1975. The first store was located on the main street in La Coruña. Due to the success of the Zara concept, the company began to expand and subsequently opened new stores.

Their first store featured look-alike models from famous fashion houses at low prices. The store proved the company's success, and Ortega began opening new Zara stores throughout Spain. In the early 1980s, Ortega began to develop a new model for the product design and distribution process. The apparel industry typically used a production schedule that required nearly 6 months from initial design to item availability. This scheme significantly limited manufacturers and distributors to 2-3 collections per year. Trying to predict consumer tastes and preferences entailed inherent difficulties, as both manufacturers and distributors constantly risked being left with unsold goods.

Ortega was looking for a way to break out of this "design-distribution pattern" by creating what he called "instant fashion" that would give him the ability to quickly respond to changing consumer tastes and new emerging trends. His dream remained unfulfilled until he met Jose Maria Castellano. An information technology specialist, Casteiano worked in Aegon Espana's information technology department before becoming CFO of ConAgra Spain. Casteianno joined Ortega in 1984 and began developing a distribution scheme that would go on to revolutionize the global apparel industry.

Thanks to Casteiano's new computerized workflow, the company was able to reduce the time from design to on-sale clothing to 10-15 days. Instead of putting all the work into one designer, they created an in-house team of designers - more than 200 by the end of the 20th century - who worked to create clothes based on popular fashions, while developing the company's own designs. By moving along a given course, the team could instantly respond to the emergence of new consumer trends and, at the same time, satisfy the needs of its customers by improving existing models with new colors and materials. Modernized production and inventory procedures, and the installation of a new computer inventory program that linked stores and an expanding network of production locations, protected the company from the risks and financial losses of producing and storing large quantities of returnable goods.

The flexible and more responsive policy of the company, which took the name Industria de Diseno Textil S.A., or Inditex, in 1985, captured the attention of Spanish buyers. By the end of the decade, the company had opened more than 80 stores in Spain. The instant fashion format, in which the entire store inventory was updated every 2 weeks, encouraged customers to return to the store more often, especially on delivery days, dubbed “Z-Day” in some markets. The understanding that the models would only be on sale for a limited time also encouraged customers to shop quickly.

The success of Zara in Spain brought Inditex to the international market in the late 80s. They opened their first overseas store in 1988 in Porto, Portugal. The following year, Inditex expanded to the United States. But success in the market cannot be predicted - by the beginning of 2000, the company opened only 6 stores in the States. A much more suitable market for Zara's format was France, where they entered in 1990. The company very quickly began opening more and more retail outlets in major cities across the country.

During the 90s, Inditex continuously invaded more and more new markets. In 92 the company entered Mexico, 93 Greece, 92 Belgium and Sweden, 95 Malta, 96 Cyprus. In the late 90s, Inditex made its moves towards international expansion into Israel, Mexico, Turkey and Japan in 1997, then in 1998 they moved into Argentina, the UK and Venezuela. While most stores were company-owned, in some markets, such as the Middle East, franchise agreements were entered into with local distributors. By 2000, Inditex had added more than a dozen countries to its list of countries of presence, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe, including Poland.

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Zara TRF

24.05.2014 / 530

Interesting information about the Zara TRF brand.

Reference data about the Zara TRF trademark.

Zara TRF (Trafaluc) is a line of youth clothing from the popular Spanish brand Zara.

The history of the brand is connected with the name of Amancio Ortega Gaon. Coming from a poor family, he created an atelier for sewing exquisite but inexpensive underwear. Things were going great until one of the buyers canceled a large order that cost Amancio all his money. Saving the business, he opens his own store and thereby lays the foundation for a future successful company. This happened in 1975 in the town of La Coruña, which still remains the location of the company's head office.

The company expected success, the sales network steadily expanded, spreading throughout the entire territory of Spain. In 1988, Zara entered the global market, opening stores in Portugal, the USA and France. Further growth in the number of branded stores accelerated; boutiques began to appear in Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Greece, Great Britain, Mexico and the Middle East. The number of stores worldwide exceeds 1,800. This is explained by the fact that the brand chose to increase the number of platforms for selling products over an extensive advertising campaign.

The bulk of retail properties are directly owned by the company, only the Middle East market is farmed out to distributors from among local entrepreneurs through franchises.

The success of the brand was ensured by a special concept developed by its founder. The secret is that Zara designers are focused on copying the most successful models from leading fashion houses. There were no expenses for advertising and product demonstration, which had a beneficial effect on the price of the final product.

Another feature is frequent and very fast updating of the model range. From the start of product development to its appearance on the store shelf, no more than 15 days pass. As a result, the assortment is completely updated twice a month. This speed is possible thanks to the coordinated work of several hundred designers. Moreover, all clothes are sewn in Europe, only accessories and shoes are delivered from India and China.

Among the numerous clothing lines for women, men and children, the youth direction, Zara TRF, occupies a special place. It produces products aimed at consumers under 25 years of age. The main styles of the collections are casual, sport-chic and club. The models are distinguished by bright colors, creative design, and natural materials. The product range includes everything you need to create a complete look: clothes, accessories, shoes. The main idea is self-expression through fashionable and inexpensive things.

Official website: http://www.zara.com/ru/ru/trf-c358509.html.

Brands
Zara

The popular Spanish brand Zara specializes in the production of men's, women's and children's clothing, shoes and accessories. The brand belongs to the huge corporation Inditex Group. All companies of the corporation are owned by billionaire Amancio Ortega Gaona, who is one of the ten richest people in the world. The brand owner's fortune is estimated at $30 billion.

History of brand development

Amancio Gaona was born in a province of Spain, his parents were not rich people. His father worked all his life as a railway worker, his mother worked as a housewife. As a teenager, Amancio had to get a job as a messenger in a shop that sold men's shirts. Later, the young man got a job in a haberdashery store, and then decided to open his own business.

After marriage, the Spaniard begins to run wholesale warehouses and opens his own production of children's dressing gowns. Direct distribution of products allowed the businessman to ensure low cost of products. Further copying of clothes and underwear from famous world brands served as the beginning of the entire future concept of the Zara brand.

In the mid-seventies, the Spaniard opened his first store, which presented collections of items copied from famous fashion houses. However, Zara items were much cheaper.

Creation of a system and development of boutiques

Soon, Amancio and his wife will open a chain of stores throughout the country. The businessman managed to develop a unique system of production and further sales. The brand's products were sold at a very affordable price, while possessing fairly high quality. Amancio Gaon's innovative system was subsequently studied by Harvard specialists.

In the 80s-90s, Gaona opened stores in other countries. His boutiques appear on the main streets of the capital of Portugal and France. This was followed by the development of boutiques in England. Mexico, Greece, post-Soviet countries.

Today the Zara brand is one of the best-selling in the world. Frequent updates of clothing lines are a hallmark of the company. Hundreds of designers are working on the development of new models. In 2011, Amancio Gaona left his post as director of the company. However, his stake in Inditex makes up the majority of his total wealth. The Spaniard plans to transfer the stake to his eldest daughter.

Brand Features

Democratic pricing policy is the main difference of the Zara brand. The company's clothing falls into the mid-price category, which makes it successfully sold all over the world. The brand does not hold its own shows of clothing lines, which allows significant savings on the final cost of products.

The manufacturing company uses the principle of “instant fashion” in the production of its collections. No more than 15 days pass from the development of the design of the model to its release. The company's team includes more than two hundred people, who always take into account new fashion concepts when developing new clothing models. The success of the brand ensures similarities with clothes from world catwalks. The main direction of the brand is youth style and classics.

The company produces clothing in small batches. In this case, both industrial production and home production are used. The brand cooperates with thirty manufacturers of accessories and materials. Today, branded boutiques update clothing collections twice a week. The brand is characterized by fast delivery and a franchise system. Forty Zara boutiques are open in Russia. They all adhere to the brand concept.

Zara brand collections

Zara's clothing lines are in many ways similar to pret-a-porter clothing. The brand produces lines designed for both a youth audience and older buyers. The Zara Women line differs from other collections in the special elegance and comfort of its products. Almost all models are aimed at middle age and are intended for women under 45 years old.

Another notable line is Zara Basic. Youth models are designed for boys and girls under 25 years old. The products belong to the club and sports style. Many models in the line are designed in a casual style. The main idea of ​​this line is the bright individuality and originality of the clothes.

Clothing for men is widely represented in the Zara Man line. Most of the models in the collection are made in a classic business style. Every man will look especially elegant and presentable in such things.

The Zara Kids line of children's clothing includes original models for any child's age. All products are distinguished by newfangled trends and high quality.

The brand also released a line of household goods.

Brand criticism

The main idea of ​​the Zara brand is to produce fashion copies that have conquered the catwalks. Another pret-a-porter collection, or, simply put, its replica ends up in the brand’s stores at a very affordable price.

The middle price segment of clothing allows the brand to produce clothes at an incredible pace. Other companies can only dream of producing rulers like this.

By and large, the Spanish entrepreneur simply makes his money on the ideas of world-famous designers. By copying models from famous fashion houses, he produces exact copies of fashionable clothes at low prices.

This circumstance is especially disliked by fashion critics. The brand doesn’t even hold its own line shows. These are the main disadvantages of the brand. The company is simply developing its own business.

Despite this circumstance, Zara clothes are selling. Fashionistas like to purchase products that replicate the clothes of great couturiers. Almost every woman can buy a beautiful dress that has won fame on the catwalks, but at a lower price.

The same applies to women's underwear. The good news is that when releasing its lines, the Zara brand makes a lot of efforts to maintain high quality products. The materials from which the products are made meet all standards, are quite practical and durable.

Official website of the brandZara: http://www.zara.com

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On September 9, Spaniard Amancio Ortega topped the ranking of the richest people in the world according to Forbes. The Zara chain, created 40 years ago by the son of a railway worker and a maid, is steadily increasing its profits

Forbes estimated the fortune of the founder of the largest group of companies in the fashion industry, Inditex, which unites the brands Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, Stradivarius, Bershka, Oysho, Uterque and Lefties, at $78 billion on September 9. Gates had $100 million less. “Easy to get, easy to lose,” Forbes journalist Dan Alexander commented on the castling. "Gates' and Ortega's fortunes will continue to fluctuate up and down as their companies' stocks rise and fall."

Ortega lasted in first place for only two days, again losing to the same Gates. And yet, for the third year in a row, he remains in the top three of the rankings, and his empire remains a leader in its industry. Created 40 years ago by the son of a railway worker and a maid, Zara's chain of stores spans the globe, and its fast fashion concept is forcing the oldest fashion houses to change their business strategies.

Proud child

Amancio Ortega was born in March 1936 in the village of Busdongo de Arbaz, population 60, in northwestern Spain. He was the youngest child in a family of four children. The family lived very poorly. “My father’s salary was 300 pesetas (less than €2 today). Don't say that it wasn't so bad at that time. There were three children in the family: the eldest Anthony, Pepita, the only girl, and me, the baby. And this salary was never enough to last until the end of the month,” he shared his memories with his close friend, the author of his biography “The Zara Phenomenon,” Covadonge O’Shea.

Amancio started his first job at the age of 13. He was prompted to this by an incident in a grocery store, where he once came with his mother to buy groceries. “There was such a high counter there that I didn’t see who was talking to my mother, but I heard a man’s voice that said something that I carried with me through time and never forget. “Josefa, I’m very sorry, but I can no longer sell you goods on credit. I was in shock,” he recalled. As O’Shea writes, Ortega had a very strong sense of pride from childhood and the humiliation he experienced prompted him to quit school and start helping his family.

Ortega got a job in a small Gala studio shop and was at the beck and call of the entire store. “I washed, packed and unpacked and interacted with customers when there were a lot of people. I think our clients told the boss about me because they noticed that from the moment I got there, I took my job very seriously and with full responsibility,” Ortega recalled.

The atmosphere that reigned in this atelier shaped his attitude to work as an activity, the meaning of which is not only to generate profit. “I keep the first contract from Gala like a treasure,” he said.

The store is still open. “It seems like he’s frozen in time,” Xabier Blanco, the author of the biographical book “From Zero to Zara,” shared his observations. “Plaid shirts, fishing caps and wool sweaters—they still sell the same things, and Amancio is Mr. World.”

15-year-old manager

After working at Gala for a year, Ortega got a job as an assistant at a higher-end store, La Maja, where his older brother and sister worked at that time. He was quickly promoted to manager and was replaced by 16-year-old Rosalia Mera Goyenchena, whom he married two years later.

Having gained enough experience, Amancio quit, and by the age of 17, in 1953, he founded his first company - GOA Confessoines (Ortega's initials backwards). The starting capital was 2.5 thousand pesetas (less than €20 today).

Women's quilted robes were sewn in a small workshop. As O'Shea writes, the robes sold very well. Reinvesting most of the money earned, Amancio put the workshop on its feet and found an intermediary who bought all the goods produced from him. Ortega's goal was large production. As Blanco explained in his book, in Galicia in With few jobs to choose from, thousands of men worked at sea while their wives stayed at home. “For little pay, they sewed very well,” Ortega told him. He began organizing thousands of women into sewing cooperatives. It turned out to be easy. “We knew well Amancio. He was very close to the workers,” one of the cooperative members described her impressions of working for Ortega.

Over ten years of work, Ortega established connections with Catalan textile workers who sold him fabrics, bypassing intermediaries, increased production capacity and gathered a large customer base. In the early 1970s, he moved into distribution and hired a team of designers, and in 1975 he opened his first retail store in the center of A Coruña. He wanted to name it Zorba, after the character in the film Zorba the Greek, played by Anthony Quinn, but he was unable to obtain the rights to use the character's name. The store was named Zara.

Zara store in Barcelona, ​​Spain (Photo: Reuters/Pixstream)

Fast fashion

Zara, the main and most recognizable asset of the Inditex group, was created in 1985 on the basis of GOA and is today the largest group of companies in the fashion industry.

The success was brought by a strategy that contradicts most of the principles by which supply chains are created in the market. Zara works without intermediaries and agents. Unlike many outsourcing clothing suppliers, it produces most of its clothing in-house. The company itself handles materials procurement, design, storage, distribution and logistics. “Our business formula is built on very little markup. We prefer to earn less on each item, but sell a lot more of them,” Ortega explained.

The main thing is speed: no more than two weeks have been allocated for the release of a new model, including design, production and delivery to stores. Zara employs over a hundred designers. It is difficult for other companies to withstand such a race: it sometimes takes months to develop just the design, and the appearance of new collections on the shelves is possible two or three times a year. Retailers have strict schedules for placing orders and receiving products, and delivery to stores should take no more than 48 hours. Zara does not strive to increase production volumes as much as possible: the company distributes new models in limited quantities and updates twice a month. Even the most popular styles do not stay on the shelves for more than a month, and large areas of Zara stores are deliberately left empty. This fuels customer interest: as stated in the book Business Genius: A More Inspiring Approach to Entrepreneurial Growth, while other clothing stores are visited by customers on average four times a year, Inditex stores are visited almost 17 times a year. Zara has virtually become synonymous with the concept of “fast fashion” used by retailers.

Due to high traffic, Zara does not need to invest significant funds on advertising. As a result, Zara consistently outperforms its competitors in terms of net profit. In 2015, Inditex's net profit increased year-on-year by 14.8%, to $3.2 billion. For comparison: H&M's net profit in 2015 was $2.5 billion (an increase from $2.4 billion a year earlier), GAP was $920 million ($1.3 billion a year earlier). Overall, the Inditex group has only been increasing profits and revenue for the last ten years in a row. In 2015, revenue was $22.8 billion.

“The Spaniards have upended the century-old two-season cycle in the fashion industry,” says Masoud Golsorkhi, editor of the London fashion magazine Tank, as quoted by the New York Times. “Now about half of the high fashion companies, such as Prada and Louis Vuitton, release four to six collections a year. Precisely because of Zara.”

Interaction and control

In designing the supply chain, Ortega relied on vertical integration, an unpopular and generally difficult model for the fashion industry. He built a chain with super-fast response and extended his control to almost all its links.

The system is built on three fundamental principles, writes Harvard Business Review (HBR). First, the communication system built at Zara provides for tracking products at all stages of production and sales in real time. Zara has a single design and production center [located at its headquarters in A Coruña]. Typically, after the start of the next season, clothing manufacturers allow retailers to adjust no more than 20% of the volume of orders, but the communication system at Zara allows them to adjust up to 40-50% of the initial orders. This helps avoid overproduction and sales.

In addition, Zara owns almost all the stores where its products are sold. Competitors, as a rule, operate under a franchise system, which limits the manufacturer’s influence on the state of retail inventories. Zara management itself sets the necessary rhythm for the movement of information and products.

Finally, the company, unlike many competitors, owns its own clothing factories (in 2015 there were 6.3 thousand worldwide), and independently supplies itself with textiles and dyes. This allows you to control the volume and timing of release and maintain independence from third-party suppliers, notes HBR.

Unsociable enthusiast

The entire time Ortega was head of the company (he left it in 2011 at the age of 75), he preferred to control all processes occurring in it. He even spent holidays, including New Year and his birthdays, at work. “If I want things to continue to function, I have to stand at my post as usual,” he explained to O’Shea.

Most of all, he recalled, he liked to spend time in the design department - a huge room littered with drawings and a variety of clothes, including famous brands. “We have to take inspiration from what people like and are looking for in the international market! Here we study garments, take them apart, draw sketches, put them back together, adapt them to our own style, produce them and send them to the market,” explained O’Shea Ortega. He didn't have his own office. “My job is not paper work, but work in a factory,” the businessman explained.

Until 1999, the only photo of him was his ID photo. "I'm trying to live quietly, be a simple person, to be able to go where I want, have a drink
coffee on the veranda in Piazza Maria Pita, the most traditional place in A Coruña, or strolling down the street with a cocktail where no one knows who I am,” he says.

The Great Forger

Zara has a special department of several dozen people who are dispersed in New York clubs, business districts of Paris, bars and fashionable streets of Spain. “We call the trend analysis procedure testing in market conditions on the target audience,” Ortega said.

Zara representatives attended fashion shows and copied clothing models, and then slightly modified models from luxury brands appeared on the shelves of the Spanish company's stores. The company was repeatedly accused of plagiarism, but each time Zara claimed that it did not copy, but caught fashion trends. In particular, in 2008, Zara was unsuccessfully sued by the French fashion house Christian Louboutin, which claimed that the Spanish company had violated its trademark by releasing very high-heeled shoes with red soles (popularly called Louboutins). Zara shoes at that time cost no more than $100, while the cost of a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes often exceeded $1 thousand.

In July 2016, the Spanish company was accused of plagiarism by American illustrator Tuesday Bassen, who claimed that the fashion brand copied her illustrations. Zara initiated an internal investigation into this matter and suspended the sale of items with illustrations similar to Bassin's work.

As Fortune magazine wrote, 11 other designers made similar complaints. One of them, Adam Kurtz, posted on the Internet the results of a comparative analysis of his work and the work of Zara. The magazine did not name the names of the remaining designers.

Constant growth

In 2001, Inditex launched an IPO on the Madrid Stock Exchange. The company was valued at $9.7 billion. Since then, its capitalization has actually been constantly growing, and as of September 15, 2016, the value of the group was $111.5 billion. As Forbes notes, the company managed not only to survive the global financial crisis, but to continue to improve its financial performance . From 2009 to 2014, according to the magazine, Ortega earned $45 billion from the shares he owned. According to Inditex and the Bloomberg terminal, at the end of 2015, Ortega owned 59.3% of its shares, worth a total of $66 billion.

“Even when I was a nobody and had practically nothing, I dreamed of development and growth. Growth is a survival mechanism. And now that I’m 72, I feel the same way,” Ortega says.

In 1988, Zara expanded abroad, opening its first store in Portugal, in 1989 in New York, in 1990 in Paris, and in 2003 in Russia.

Today, the Zara chain has over 2.1 thousand stores in 88 countries. There are 91 Zara stores in Russia. This is one of the key markets for Inditex. Even during the crisis of 2014-2015, several new Zara stores appeared in the country. At the end of 2015, Russia became the third market for Inditex in terms of the number of stores (after Spain and China).

Today, the Zara company is known to almost every person. The retail chain 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" is a brand of which country? Who is its founder? What is the history of creation? These and other questions about the Zara company can be answered in this article. The fashionable Spanish brand produces clothing for men, women and children. In addition, products such as shoes, accessories, underwear and perfumes are produced.

A few words about the founder

The largest company that cares about its customers and at the same time manages to follow fashion trends is Zara. Whose brand is it, who is at its origins? This question interests many fashionistas. 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 and his family moved 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 knitting factory.

"Zara". Start

The history of the Zara brand began in 1975. It was then that Amancio Ortega, together with his first wife Rosalia Mera, opened his own small store. It was located on the main street of La Coruña. The future fashion mogul wanted to name his store Zorba, since his favorite movie was “Zorba the Greek.” But there were problems with registration, and Amancio had to change the name to ZARA.

Incredibly successful ideas of a Spanish businessman

Gaona was 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 less. This means that the average consumer will definitely fall for fashionable clothes at a low price. Amancio's concept turned out to be very successful. The Zara brand quickly became popular. Retail outlets began to open in all corners of Spain at crazy speed. In the 1980s, José Maria Castellano joined Ortega's team. Together, the friends came up with “instant fashion,” which became an innovative business system. Also, the newly minted colleagues opened their own design studio, which they called Inditex.

Acceleration of production

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 one more problem. The range of clothing was updated too slowly, new models were released only two or three times a year. Jose Maria Castellano, an information technology 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 all over the world. And this is not at all surprising. Indeed, for the fast and high-quality production of products, the company’s managers decided to hire not just one designer, but an entire internal team of stylists, which already at the end of the 1990s employed more than two hundred people. They worked using fashionable popular clothing as a basis for their collections. In addition, fashion designers worked on developing their own style for the company. The given 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 the accumulation of a large number of returnable clothing in warehouses.

New markets

Today, young people really love and appreciate products from the Zara company (the brand's country is Spain). But this retail chain 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 also began supplying its products to Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Great Britain, Venezuela and Japan. But the French market became the most suitable for ZARA. New retail outlets quickly opened here and were located in major cities of the country. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company entered the markets of Germany, Holland, Poland, Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe.

Products

The Zara brand, the origin of which is connected with many interesting facts, produces fashionable men's, women's and children's clothing. In addition, the company produces a line of shoes, cosmetics, accessories and perfumes. The main thing for ZARA designers is to focus all their attention on the fashion 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 shows or other methods of influence that are traditional in the fashion industry.

Pros of Zara

The ZARA retail chain offers its customers a fairly wide range of products, unlike any other companies in the fashion industry. This company produces approximately eleven thousand different products per year, while its competitors produce only two to four thousand. The company only needs one month to launch a product from the development stage and only needs two weeks to make changes to the design of an already produced product. Zara quickly and easily responds to current customer requests thanks to its accelerated production process. If a model is not in demand, it is immediately removed from sale. Moreover, all orders for its production are canceled, and the company immediately launches products with a new design. It is noteworthy that any product is not in stores for more than one month. For this reason, buyers 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 under the control of 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 goods in Asian countries. But ZARA produces the most fashionable models only in its own factories, which are located in Spain and Portugal. It is in these countries that wage workers are paid much cheaper than in the rest of Western Europe. The Zara retail chain moves its production to Asia and Turkey only for the production of such goods as standard T-shirts and T-shirts, since they are on store shelves for quite a long time.

The life of Amancio Ortega, creator of ZARA

Amancio Ortega is considered the wealthiest businessman in Spain. He is the person who owns the Zara brand. Now Amancio ranks fourth in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. His capital amounts to sixty-four billion dollars. When the Inditex corporation was doing great, and Zara even surpassed its main competitor H&M in income, the company's founder began to have 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 - a daughter, Sandra, and a son, Marcos, who was severely disabled. In 1985, the couple officially dissolved their relationship. After the divorce, 7% of Inditex shares went to Rosalia, who died in 2013, and her daughter Sandra Ortega Mera inherited her fortune. Amancio married for the second time his assistant Flores Perez Marcote. They still live in perfect harmony today. They have a daughter, Marta, who works for Amancio's company. A few years ago, Ortega, at the age of 78, stepped down as chairman of Inditex. He handed over the reins of government to young and enterprising people. Now Amancio leads a rather secluded lifestyle and does not communicate with journalists.

"Instant Fashion" by Zara

The Zara brand is part of the Inditex corporation. This group also includes such world-famous brands as Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Uterque, Stradivarius, Oysho and Pull&Bear. ZARA clothing is a combination of a designer 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 speed, and they are updated quite often. More than four hundred designers are working on creating new models. The creator of ZARA himself called this approach “instant fashion.” Clothes do not stay on store shelves unless they are in demand. It is quickly discontinued and a new one is created. Today, one thousand six hundred ZARA stores are open in seventy-seven countries around the world.

This year, all continents experienced an unusually warm autumn, which everyone was happy about, except clothing stores, where the autumn collection remained untouched by customers. Most retail chains in the fashion world suffered losses, but not Zara - this company was rescued by the “instant fashion” system.

Over the course of several years of stunning success, Zara has grown into the largest textile concern Inditex, which includes the brands Zara, Pull and Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Uterqüe and the footwear division Tempe.

In total, Inditex has 6,460 retail outlets around the world, employing more than 120,000 people.

"Instant Fashion"

In most textile companies, the clothing production cycle takes approximately 8 months - this period includes design development, fabric search, fabric dyeing, model sewing, and collection arrival in the store. And at Zara this process takes place in just 2 weeks. Inditex has its own design team of about 400 professionals. They create inexpensive clothing designs in a very short time based on the latest high fashion trends. Such a system allows you to quickly update the entire assortment of stores, quickly remove unpopular models from production and refine the design of existing ones at the request of consumers.

Thus, Zara always has its finger on the pulse of fashion, being one of the first to respond to new trends and customer wishes. Customers are looking forward to the days of new deliveries to stores - “Z-Day”. It happens that clothes are swept off the shelves in a few hours, and the updated collection is completely sold out. No wonder Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette described Zara as “perhaps the most innovative and disruptive retail chain in the world.”

Inditex is one of the few companies that has resisted the temptation to move all clothing production to countries with cheap labor. Less than a quarter - 24% of production - is produced in China, Morocco, Bangladesh and Turkey. The rest of the products are produced in the north of Spain and Portugal.

But, no matter where the item is made, every item in the Inditex product range passes through Spain. Designers and experts in the company's main studio in Arteixo (Galicia) first check the quality of products, and only then send the goods throughout the retail network, including China.

Business development

In fact, the store manager, who sends reports to Inditex headquarters twice a week based on sales data and customer surveys, is a key figure in a successful business scheme. This is why Inditex managers receive much higher salaries than their competitors, as well as large bonuses at the end of the month.

Zara stores have not needed advertising for a long time, so the money saved on promotion is invested in opening new stores and in the development of projects and brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius and Bershka.

However, Zara has a somewhat dismissive attitude not only towards advertising, but also towards journalists. It was not the first attempt to get comments from Zara representatives - several times, in response to queries and calls from the editors to the company's main office, public relations representatives responded that Inditex's corporate policy does not allow comments. However, Zara experts still reported several important facts specifically for New Retail.

According to Inditex representatives, in the nine months of 2014 (from February to October), retail sales, including the turnover of the Zara online store, increased by 10.5%. And in the period from November 1 to December 8, sales growth was 14%.

Regarding the recent closure of the Zara flagship store on Tverskaya, representatives of the fashion brand note that “its commercial activities were absorbed by the activity of other Zara stores nearby.” However, as previously reported by the media, Zara representatives did not come to an agreement with the tenants on a new amount for rent on Tverskaya Street.

At the origins of the brand

Today the founder of the network, Amancio Ortega Gaona, is the wealthiest man in Spain, in fourth place on the list of the richest people on the planet with a capital of 64 billion dollars.

At the age of fourteen, Amancio followed his family to La Coruña in the province of Galicia, where he became an apprentice to an Italian fashion designer. The owner of the atelier once told the father of the future fashion industry magnate: “You know, he won’t make a tailor, a tailor must be easy-going and sociable.” The owner of the studio was right, and therefore in the 1960s Amancio became a manager in one of the stores.

In 1972, at the age of 37, Amancio opened his knitting factory. At first, he and his first wife, Rosalia Mera, sewed robes, nightgowns and lingerie right in the living room of their own home.

Rosalia Mera, first wife of Amancio Ortega Gaona

Amancio Ortega realized before the Chinese that it was possible to make copies of the best clothing models from famous couturiers and sell them several times cheaper. The idea was successful, and Zara stores began to open at incredible speed throughout Spain.

In the 80s, Jose Maria Castellano joined Ortega’s team, with whom Gaona came up with an innovative “instant fashion” business system, a mandatory component of which was his own design studio. The studio was named Industria de Diseño Textil S.A., or Inditex.

Inditex head office in Galicia (Spain)

If the business was going uphill and Inditex in a short period of time caught up and surpassed its main competitors, including H&M, in terms of production volumes and income, then family affairs were not going well for the creator of Zara.

In 1985, Amancio Ortega separated from his first wife, Rosalia Mera, who went through the first and most difficult years of the business with him. From this marriage there were two children - Sandra and Marcos. The latter, unfortunately, was born with a severe form of disability.

Marta Ortega Perez, youngest daughter of Amancio Ortega Gaon

A few years ago, 78-year-old Amancio Ortega stepped down as chairman of Inditex, handing over the reins to a younger generation.

They say that the creator of “instant fashion” still likes to come to lunch at the Inditex headquarters, apparently in order to once again be amazed at the size to which his brainchild has grown and continues to grow.

Daria Tkacheva was interested in the history of the brand