The unstoppable expansion of fashion brand conglomerates had been of the few reasons why the industry had been surviving to this very day. The risk involved in trying a new market, or releasing an unseen collection or battling an unknown trend is such a gargantuan task that only a few have mastered the art.
And since putting up a business is always a chance of hits and misses, many factors are to be considered before agreeing to a new venture. The biggest names in the fashion planet are the ones who have played with fire and went on to stretch.
They’re the ones who have never faltered in the belief that consumers would always appreciate something new. These brands, and all the people behind it, are confident in the ability of their chosen genre in clothing that somewhere, somehow, it will be patronized. With gambling, they either take something or loss something, but as how things are turning out, it seemed that they have reaped more than they sow.
Whenever that you pass by a shopping center, there are hordes of fashion names to be seen and choose from. Sometimes, people got optional paralysis on the numerous stores scattered left and right. But if you were to cite a huge fashion family, you might not think of this group which is slowly crawling its way up to the fashion food chain — The Inditex Group.
Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A. (Inditex) is a Spanish multinational clothing company headquartered in Arteixo, Galicia. It is made up of almost a hundred companies dealing in activities related to textile design, production and distribution. Amancio Ortega, Spain’s richest man, and the world’s fourth richest man, is the founder and current largest shareholder. The current chairman of Inditex is Pablo Isla.
Inditex, the biggest fashion group in the world, operates over 6,600 stores worldwide and owns brands like Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius, Zara, Tempe, and Uterque, and also a low-cost brand Lefties. The majority of its stores are corporate-owned; Franchises are only conceded in countries where corporate properties cannot be foreign.
The group designs and manufactures almost everything by itself, and new designs are dispatched twice a week to Zara stores.
Most manufacturing is now in low labor cost countries, mainly in Morocco, China, and Turkey, although much production continues in Spain and Portugal, particularly for its Zara brand. In addition, Inditex has a factory for shoe design, production and distribution in the town of Elche, on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
The company started by introducing a new concept of fashion design: instead of long-lasting pieces of clothing, they offered a great variety at affordable prices. In the beginning, Zara became famous by offering clothing at low prices and then slowly worked its way up to match the quality of today’s best brands.
The Inditex conglomerate started in 1963 as a dressmaking company, which focuses on style, fabric and function. In 1975, they have ventured out commercially by opening the first Zara store in Galicia, Spain. The consumer leverage in this city had paid-off as they have made Zara a staple in clothing during its first few years.
International expansion had been evident in 1988 with Inditex opening their first international office in Oporto, Portugal. Today, Inditex’s stores can be seen in places like New York’s Fifth Avenue, Milan’s Piazza Duomo, London’s Regent Street and Oxford Street, Frankfurt’s Zeil, Shanghai’s Nanjing West Road, Tokyo’s Shibuya and Seoul’s Myeong-dong to name a few.
In the 1990s, Inditex began creating or acquiring subsidiaries to manage different collections: Bershka, Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Stradivarius.
In May 2001, Inditex turned into a publicly traded company, being valued at US$8 billion.
In 2008, Inditex launched Uterque, the new accessories brand of the company. Three inaugural flagship stores were opened in Madrid (Calle Serrano), Barcelona and A Coruna.
On 22 September 2008, Inditex opened its 4,000th store in the Ginza in Tokyo, considered one of the most important shopping areas in the world.
Inditex’s subsidiaries include their flagship brand Zara which carried different forms of fashion and styles like daily clothing, from informal to serious types of garments, dress and suits and technically fashion for men, women and children. Pull and Bear, on the other hand, focuses on laid-back clothing and accessories to urbanized young people on affordable ranges.
A more mellow youth-focused Pull and Bear is what Bershka is all about. Massimo Dutti, offers clothing that are more elegant, classic, and studied designs, for daily and formal clothes. It is more expensive than the rest of stores of the group.
It offers fashion for women, men and, recently, for children. Stradivarius’ focus is innovation for women fashion, Oysho targets women’s home wear and undergarments, Zara Home is the branch for domestic merchandise and Tempe is for footwear.
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