Zara is a retailing chain of Inditexthat specializes in high-fashion at reasonable prices. In the last 12 months, Inditex’s stock price has increased by 50% despite bearish market conditions. The 50% increase is due to the investor expectations of Inditex’s growth. Inditex’s growth can be contributed to the decisions it has made in creating a vertically integrated centralized process. The centralization of its vertically integrated operations in Europe provided it with its competitive advantage; however, I believe it will also make it fail if it decides to grow substantially into other markets. Financial Analysis compare to competitors In comparing Inditex financial performance against its competitors, it is apparent that Inditex is performing extremely well compared to its competitors in terms of productivity of its workforce, net revenues and cost of goods sold. Their return on investment is also significantly higher than others. Success Factors The vertical integration of Zara was successful because of the following key tactical decisions: Ownership and control of production: Unlike many of Zara’s competitors, Zara decided not to outsource most of its production. Instead the majority of the production was performed in Europe. By having operations in close- proximity to its headquarters allowed for better and faster communication between functional areas for faster decision making. It also provided an added sense of quality to the product as the tags would be labeled with“made in Europe” rather than “made in China”. More importantly, Zara owned many of the fabric dying, processing and cutting equipment that provided Zara added control andflexibility to adopt new trends on demand. The added flexibility helped Zaraon two ...
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...o the creative nature and providing designs that meet each markets needs. Lastly I believe the teams will be able to leverage many of the fashion designs across countries as fashion is starting to converge with globalization to a certain degree. In conclusion, Zara has done an excellent job of creating a highly vertically integrated businessin which they are able to control the quality of the product, and be able adapt quickly to market trends and customer wants through highly affective operations. Zara should continue to expand its operations in Europe as they understand the market the best and can leverage their existing architecture. Entering the Asian and U.S. markets will be a more difficult and cause severe stress on their current centralized vertically integrated system. They will likely have to decentralize their production operations to adapt to the markets.
Expanding to international markets benefits REI giving them a more diverse market to choose from. This will allow for the company to expand their product base of their most wanted products and to add new products at lower cost. In this way, REI’s base, or foundation markets benefit.
It is found that there was not a common approach utilized in managing company’s lineup of sporting goods prior to restructuring started in 2005. Although Adidas has diversified in the sporting industry, the company still failed to realize resources fit within the business segments. Furthermore, there are integration problems between Adidas athletic footwear business unit with Salomon’s business units. As the business segments are too diverse, different raw materials and labors as well as processes are required to develop products that did not allow company to capitalize on any value chain. In serving different needs throughout the diversification, the three business segments made with different product mix has faced problems to cross promote the merchandise. In addition, through the varied demands of each business segment, there are no economie...
While becoming a more reputable brand, IAMS does not want to have competition with another dog food brand since Zamzows is a well-known company in
This part of the report will highlight the problems within the external environment that affect Marks and Spencer. Before planning and decision making can take place an organisation must be aware of these issues. The key factors that impact upon all organisations are Political, Economic, Social and Technological. These factors are commonly referred to as PEST factors. Political changes like change of government could affect the minimum wage that M&S workers are paid. Economic factors such as inflation could affect the pricing of garments. The Social factors that would need to be taken into account are lifestyle changes and demographics, M&S would need to consider where their target market stood. Technological advances could also affect M&S sales just recently their website has been updated from a corporate site to a new website offering online buying. Globalisation is a huge environmental factor affecting M&S. Globalisation is the increase in cross-border economic, social and technological exchange. For organisations it increases competition and the search for cost advantages.
Weave Tech has several strategic challenges and opportunities since the purchase of the once then called Johnson-ware apparel in 2007. Since the organization has had the challenge of rebranding themselves to attract a new customer base which is also an opportunity to grow the organization. Weave Tech has to reposition the organization to be successful throughout the changes. Another strategic challenge the organization is undergoing is reorganizing and attracting a new management team which causes for cuts and layoffs. These cuts and layoffs can drastically effect the morale of other employees and ultimately production. Over the next 3 years Weave Tech goal will be to strategically handle these challenges and opportunities while
Zara sources fabric, other inputs, and finished products from external suppliers. It has purchasing offices in Barcelona and Hong Kong. This gives Zara a competitive advantage towards the costs of goods sold, as it can purchase from both Europe and Asia according to prices. Buying more from China in the future might reduce even more the costs of goods sold.
Analysis & Recommendation: Zara’s main strategy is the ability to respond very quickly to the demands of target customers which called for identifying trends of the customer in advance. The company has been able to identify the trends and meet the demand with the help of its autonomously organized structure and its effective value chain systems. The present system followed by Zara has been very effective and very easy to maintain, which as a result has persuaded the company to continue without any change in the present system so far. The problem that Zara faces right now is that the system that they use, P-O-S (Point of Sale terminals), runs on DOS which Microsoft does not support anymore and any hardware change in the POS terminal will not be compatible with the current POS software. Although the sense of urgency for the change may not be that high, investing in IT infrastructure is a must as MS Dos is an obsolete technology and there is no contract or guarantee from their POS terminal vendor that they will continue supplying the same terminal with out much changes in the hardware for any specific period of time, therefore change is unavoidable. The other main issue that Zara faces is that the stores don’t share inventory information electronically and hence inventory management becomes highly difficult and manual. The decision making process is based on the judgment of employees throughout the company instead of relying on a small set of decision makers; the majority of the decisions were made by store managers and as a result they placed orders for the items rather than simply accepting and displaying what headquarters decided to send them.
The fundamental business strategy of Zara is very simple which is linking customer demand to manufacturing, and liking manufacturing to distribution. Zara has been running their business in fashion industry which is susceptible to seasons and quick changing customer tastes. Zara has been approached to and considered their business as a perishable commodity business just like a fresh baked cake or bread to be consumed quickly.
H&M is the world’s second largest retailer, only behind its main rival Zara of Inditex (Petro, 2012). The company currently has 3006 stores in 53 countries. The company does not own any factories. H&M outsources production to network of 800 independent suppliers; 75% in Asia and 25% in Europe. In order to increase the efficiency and productivity of its supply chain, the company strategically locates its network of 20 to 30 production offices close to its suppliers. According to Stockholm Newsroom, the pretax profit of the company for the month of June to August of 2013 is $907 million, which indicates an 11 rise in turnover (Pollard, 2013). The company continuous development plan facilitates its goal for both brick and mortar, and online stores expansion worldwide. The target segments for H&M, a category specialist store, are trendsetters and fashion/money conscious males and females ranging from 16 to 40 years old with income ranging $15,000 to $60,000 annually.
Segmentation: Some of the important bases for segmenting consumer markets are Demographic, Geographic, benefits, Psychographic and Usage rate segmentation. Geographic segmentation is the priority of Zara. It is a global brand and its supply chain management is very much perfect. It helps Zara in getting the latest trends into stores in three weeks’ time based on consumer preferences. It’s a Spanish brand, so it would a better option for Zara to open more store in European countries. Consumers would be more interested in making their decision towards preferring Zara. It has dived its segment on the basis of gender where more preference is for women and less preference for men. It can be seen that in any Zara store there are two floor for women and 1 floor or a part of a floor for men products. For example, the store in Leeds. It focuses on women age group up to 35 years who is more concerned about having a fashionable life style. As per the psychographic segmentation, Zara consumers are more ambitious and are attracted towards fancy and trendy products. It makes products that give...
Miuccia Prada once said that “What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language”. Miuccia Prada and the Prada brand have grown from humble beginnings making quality leather goods to a public traded company with a current market capitalization of over $26 billion (USD) . With the development of Prada as one of the world’s premier luxury brands it provides an excellent case study to examine how strategy paved the way for the success of the Prada brand. First, an examination of Prada’s strategic positioning against luxury brand rivals Louis Vuitton Hennessey Moet (LVHM) and Kering (Gucci). The acquisition history of Prada will be reviewed, where some preliminary conclusions can be made about what has been contributing factors to both the successes and failures. Then finally, an evaluation of what the future holds for Prada and the sustainability of its competitive advantage.
The business model that sets Zara apart from other clothing retailers is how rapidly the company changes stocks and releases new product lineups. The company averages 12-16 collections annually which equates to more than one lineup a month. Due to stock being limited and the rapid production Zara brings forth, their items are viewed as exclusive promoting further business. Their customers are happy knowing that their specific article of clothing is more “rare” due to only having an average of a two-week window to purchase the clothing. The company specifically targets current trends and has them in the store within 30 days. This maintains the brand’s uniqueness and relativity in fashion.
Stakeholders are individuals, groups, and organisations with the power to influence the delivery of an organisation’s strategy and thus the organisation’s performance and/or a significant interest in an organisation’s strategy and thus the organisation’s performance (Wisniewski, 2001; Ackermann & Eden, 2011). In the context of the draft BSC to be developed, however, the analysis shall focus on relatively aggregated stakeholder groups. Firstly, the aim of this stakeholder analysis is not to pinpoint individual persons as stakeholders who may then be managed more easily than large organisations, but to identify rather broad stakeholder groups interested in Zara’s performance. Secondly, addressing
Thau was inspired by the Bashar Nejdawi, president of Ingram Micro Mobility that is a provider of technology and supply chain services. According to Nejdawi, “In five years, consumer electronics stores as we know them today won’t even exist, and the same rings true for our favorite apparel brands”. He also asserts that three influential factors will change the retail landscape: instant gratification, borrowing and customization. A good example of instant gratification is Uber or Amazon. The Uber customer can see in real time where the Uber car is and when is going to arrive. In the same way the Amazon provide fulfillment program that allow retailers to sell products that are not physically in storage. In this way the retailers do not have to care about inventory and can concentrate on marketing. Secondly, the borrowing culture is going to grow. As an example is Zip Car or Netflix applications. On the Zip Car program someone can borrow a car just for few hours. Likewise, some business offer a mobile device rental program that allow a customer to lease the latest device for a fraction of the cost. Further, the customization program permits customers to choose their preferences before the product is being made. As an example is miAdidas company that gives to the clients the possibility to create
On the other hand, most factors prove otherwise. The retail industry does not have high Economies of Scale to be exploited in general . Yet, it is impossible to run department stores like Metro on a small scale . A large retail space, inventory, and warehouse are necessary to host a specialized portfolio of brands and products to better attract both customers and suppliers. Heavy capital requirements and operational expen...