QUALITY

The design of Zara’s headquarters also make sure that equality is reinforced. The headquar-ters consist of large halls, filled with isles of desks. The managers usually sit in the middle. However, everyone has the same size desks and there are no secluded offices. This is be-cause face-to-face discussions are always en-couraged and employees are encouraged to express their views and concerns.

Have you ever seen a Zara commercial on a billboard or on TV?The other trend-bucking aspect of the company's business model is its approach to advertising. Fashion retailers spend on average 3.5% of rev-enue on advertising their products, while Zara's parent company Inditex spends just 0.3%.But that doesn’t means that Zara is doing nothing for its product promo-tion, Zara’s take on product promotion are slightly different form the other counter partsThe company believes that its shop windows, the contents of which are also decided in La Corua are all the advertising it needs.The philosophy seems to have worked. The company's success is a proof that it is still possible to build a massive brand by doing no more than meeting a market need.

ADVERTISING

OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF PRODUCTION

For one,most other retailers (like the American Chain Gap and the Swedish retailer Hennes & Maurits) completely outsource their produc-tion to factories around the world,many of them in low cost Asian countries. In contrast, it is estimated that 80 percent of Zara's produc-tion is carried out in Europe, much of it within a small radius of its production is in owned or closely-contorolled facilities.While this gives Zara a tremendous amount of flexibility and control,it does have to contend with higer people costs,averaging 17-20 times the costs in Asia.

SALE

Apart from designing to the fashion-of-the-day,Zara's strategy of producing low valum per style and changing products quickly in its stores enabels it to cut down on the discounts as well. Only about 18 percent of Zara clothing dosn't work with its customers and must be discounted.That's half the industry average of 35 percent. Zara also has two clearly time-limited sales a year rather than constant markdowns.