Zara- Its for Fast Fashion

Executive Summary:

Zara was build on two main principles, A) the need to respond to the ever changing fashion trends, of their main target client base, fashion conscious young city dwellers. Trends changed rapidly and so was the need to meet these ever changing demands. B) The management believed in having decentralized decision making ability, where they relied on the judgment of employees and store managers, as to which trend would sell in a area and how much of it should be produced and supplied.

With an in-house design team based in La Coruna, Spain, and a tightly controlled factory and distribution network, Zara can move a design from production to their world wide store locations in as little as three weeks. The store layout, minimum inventory levels at any time, and latest trends introduced every few weeks, keep customers coming back again and again to Zara.

With a vision to create a strong world wide presence for Zara, the founder Mr. Amancio Ortega and the Mr. Castellano knew that computers were critically important to Zara for its growth.

All its IT applications were written in house, by their IT team, keeping in mind Zara’s unique requirements. With preference to speed and decentralization, Zara has consistently spent on computerization at their DC levels. This helped in streamlining the quantity of inventory and method of shipments from DC’s to each store. It also constantly upgraded its personal digital assistants PDAs for any new technological advances as it occurred.

However the potential limitation for Zara is the use of their out of date technology. The system Zara was currently using was the point- of