In the small city of Arteixo in northwestern Spain stands the headquarters of Inditex, the company behind Zara, the world’s largest fast-fashion brand. Its design studio is as open as a soccer field.

In the middle of the office, menswear product manager Aki Ginko (32) is speaking to someone in Japanese. After hanging up, he walks over to a group of five or six designers standing nearby and says in Spanish, “That was the Ginza store. Skinny jeans are selling well, and lots of customers are asking for black denim.” “We heard about black denim from New York, too. Let’s find some fabric.” One designer immediately searches through a stack of fabric samples.

Information about the new design and fabric goes to a patternmaker sitting at a computer beside the designers. He completes the pattern and hands it to a cutter standing nearby. The cut fabric then goes to a seamstress, who finishes the garment. The entire process takes just two hours. The designers lay the garment on the floor, discuss it and decide whether to mass-produce it. Feedback from a store on Tokyo’s Ginza street has become a new product on the spot.

Zara began as a small store in 1975 and, 27 years later, had grown into a global brand with sales of €6.264 billion. A visit to its Spanish headquarters reveals the secret behind its speed.

◇ New Products Flown In Twice a Week=Zara quickly produces clothes in response to shoppers and sells them at affordable prices so customers can buy them readily. These rules of “fast fashion” closely resemble the approach of Seoul’s Dongdaemun Market.

Zara supplies new products by air to all its stores worldwide twice a week. Last year alone, it introduced some 12,000 new items—an average of about 33 a day. The open design studio helps make production fast. Product managers check store feedback every day, share it with designers and sales staff, and incorporate it into new designs.

“Sales trends and customer suggestions feed directly into design, so we avoid unsuccessful designs and excessive inventory,” said president Pablo Isla. Zara’s success has sparked a fast-fashion wave across the global fashion industry. In Spain alone, brands such as Mango and Custo Barcelona have emerged and gained international recognition.

◇ Speed Comes First in Investment, Too=Designed garments are made at a production facility directly across the road from headquarters. Zara has 11 factories in the Arteixo area alone. About 64% of its production takes place in Spain or nearby countries such as Portugal. Why not move production to Asia, where labor costs are lower?

“Making and shipping products quickly matters more than making them cheaply,” Isla replied. Sending every product by air is another investment Zara makes for speed. Even its Asian stores can receive orders within two days.

New items arrive so frequently that most of a store’s clothing changes within three weeks, yet Zara does not reproduce even its popular designs. “If I come back later, the same clothes won’t be here, so I buy what I like on the spot,” said Elena (22), a customer at the Diagonal store in Barcelona. “They’re affordable, so buying them right away isn’t a burden.”

Arteixo, Spain=Reporter Im Mi-jin



Zara=A fast-fashion brand that began in the small northwestern Spanish city of A Coruña before moving its headquarters to nearby Arteixo. Founder Amancio Ortega once worked as a clothing-store clerk. After running an apparel manufacturing business, he developed the company’s current production system. Zara is known for upscale designs at accessible prices.

Fast Fashion=A system of producing small quantities of many styles in response to current trends, instead of making clothes well ahead of each season. Fashion companies have widely adopted it to reduce inventory and respond quickly to trends. It has also encouraged shoppers to buy inexpensive, trendy clothes and discard them soon afterward.