The Case of Zara: a Supposed Exception to Globalization
The case of Zara: a supposed exception to globalization
The article written by Nebath Tokatli is about the case of Zara, a fast fashion retailer company supposed to be an exception to the global trend of this sector. The author, after a brief introduction in which she declares her purpose to demonstrate this idea to be false, starts describing the change in the culture of fashion from “houte couture” and ready-to-wear too fast fashion.
Fast fashion retailers do not directly invest in design but instead they take inspiration and try to copy, obviously with some differences, the most attractive models presented by high fashion houses at international events like Milan fashion week or similar. Then they suddenly transform these ideas into cheap clothes to sell in their worldwide stores.
The success of this strategy is based on the fact that consumers can be fashionable without spending too much and they also have the possibility to keep up with the varying trends of high fashion. The principal brand of fast fashion besides Zara are the Swedish Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), the USA based “Gap”, the Italian Benetton and other minors like the Spanish “Mango” or the British “Topshop”. Nebahat Tokatli described five key points common to all these brands; first a huge number of stores around the world; secondly, their success is based on a “highly responsive communication channel”; third, the purpose to ensure a sort of exclusivity to their customers offering only a limited amount for each product; forth, a highly effective supply chain and finally they have to be a publicly traded company.
But despite this similarities there is a point which makes a huge difference between companies: the majority of them are only retailers and fuel globalisation with global sourcing but some of them, like Zara, prefer to manufacture their own clothes (and they do this in Western countries apparently without taking advantage of globalisation). So it seemed that there wasn’t a
The article written by Nebath Tokatli is about the case of Zara, a fast fashion retailer company supposed to be an exception to the global trend of this sector. The author, after a brief introduction in which she declares her purpose to demonstrate this idea to be false, starts describing the change in the culture of fashion from “houte couture” and ready-to-wear too fast fashion.
Fast fashion retailers do not directly invest in design but instead they take inspiration and try to copy, obviously with some differences, the most attractive models presented by high fashion houses at international events like Milan fashion week or similar. Then they suddenly transform these ideas into cheap clothes to sell in their worldwide stores.
The success of this strategy is based on the fact that consumers can be fashionable without spending too much and they also have the possibility to keep up with the varying trends of high fashion. The principal brand of fast fashion besides Zara are the Swedish Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), the USA based “Gap”, the Italian Benetton and other minors like the Spanish “Mango” or the British “Topshop”. Nebahat Tokatli described five key points common to all these brands; first a huge number of stores around the world; secondly, their success is based on a “highly responsive communication channel”; third, the purpose to ensure a sort of exclusivity to their customers offering only a limited amount for each product; forth, a highly effective supply chain and finally they have to be a publicly traded company.
But despite this similarities there is a point which makes a huge difference between companies: the majority of them are only retailers and fuel globalisation with global sourcing but some of them, like Zara, prefer to manufacture their own clothes (and they do this in Western countries apparently without taking advantage of globalisation). So it seemed that there wasn’t a