M&s and Zara

Marks and Spencer is a British retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London. They specialize in selling clothing and luxury food products. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds.

Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Arteixo, Galicia, and founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera. It is the flagship chain store of the Inditex group; it was described as "possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world."

The fast and flexible supply chain is the core competency of Zara. The company's outstanding management of supply chain in the textile apparel industry and IT system applications which support the rapid response of the supply chain are the key points to Zara’s success. Along with the slow development of the fashion industry and its narrow profit margin, the use supply chain management can help the company create more profit and increase the competitiveness of enterprises. Zara’s supply chain, from its design, procurement, production, and distribution to the final point of sale, we can use one word to describe the innovation that Zara brings to the industry, fast.

Compared with the M&S’s supply chain, we can see the Zara’s chain works with the concept of quickness, and we can summarize it as: quick design, quick product, quick logistics, and quick exchange.

Everything is coordinated from Zara’s headquarters on an industrial estate in Spain. By controlling the entire process, Zara can react quickly to changing fashion trends, providing a continual newness to its customers. The efficiency of the system equates to low costs and low inventory. Zara’s design team produces approximately 11,000 different designs a year, without outsourcing its manufacturing to countries where labor is much less expensive. All this is achieved with word of mouth advertisement. Money is instead invested in the quality of design and manufacturing process. Zara believes its shop windows are all the advertising they need.

One of the major differences in the M&S supply chain versus the Zara supply chain is the number of steps or touch points. The M&S supply chain consists of 30 steps, whereas the Zara supply chain only has 17. Inherently, additional handling and steps in the process implies more of an opportunity for waste within the process. Zara has chosen to implement the Lean Manufacturing into its supply chain, while M&S has not quite reached that point, and act as a solution shop. Their focus is on solving problems versus determining the main cause of the problems; hence the issue will likely resurface. Zara strives to eliminate waste, whereas M&S is tolerant of a certain amount of unavoidable excess. Zara is striving for perfection, while M&S is satisfied with reaching a threshold performance. One of the main differences in their supply chains is that Zara pulls customers