What is the key to the success of ZARA model?

What is the key to the success of ZARA model? Any local bottleneck in the high-speed operation system may lead to the failure of the whole Zara model. Some people think that the key to the success of ZARA model lies in its fast imitation ability and strong imitation team; Some people think that its rapid production mode has eliminated the supply chain bottleneck of the whole textile and garment industry; Some people think that any local bottleneck in the high-speed operation system may lead to the failure of the whole Zara model.

Some people think that the key to the success of ZARA model lies in its fast imitation ability and strong imitation team; Some people think that its rapid production mode has eliminated the supply chain bottleneck of the whole textile and garment industry; Some people think that it lies in its efficient logistics distribution system; Some people think that it lies in its high-frequency and humanized information system and communication mechanism; Some people think that it lies in its huge marketing network and rapid sales ability concept propaganda and "clothing supermarket" model; Some people think that it is supported by its strong financial strength; Others think it is its highly integrated vertical supply chain and operation mode. ...

We believe that any success is a systematic and global success, and any local bottleneck in a high-speed system may lead to the failure of the whole model, and ZARA's success is no exception. After careful study, enterprise A joined the ranks of learning ZARA in August 2006, and set up a rapid project department of ZARA mode to start the journey of transforming ZARA mode in all directions.

Changes in all links of supply chain

In addition to the original development team, the product quickly organized and developed a professional buyer team to collect the best-selling styles of the season from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other places where fashion information is concentrated. Relevant incentives have also been formulated. Thousands of employees, hunters, OEM factories and all people interested in fashion can provide relevant information, and if the information or sample clothes are adopted, there will be corresponding rewards. In addition to providing sample clothes directly, you can also imitate them according to photos taken in bars, concerts and streets, as well as fashion information obtained from professional publications at home and abroad.

After the relevant styles are printed, they will be handed over to the business team for order decision. The business team is relatively large, including experienced first-line internal market personnel, competitors' marketing personnel, fashion people or consumers with taste and vision.

After reviewing the funds, mix and match the selected funds to be put into production with the products of the previous weeks, take good photos, show poles and models, and write down the order of each display clearly to guide the standardized display of the store and send it online for franchisees to order.

After the product rapid production business team makes a selection decision, the supply chain management team makes a comprehensive decision according to the sales forecast, distribution volume, marketable cycle, distribution cycle, production cycle, production cost, target inventory structure and control volume. , so as to allocate sales and production, calculate the production quantity of each section and hand it over to the purchasing and production team for purchasing and production. Internal factories and outsourcing factories compete on the same starting line around quality, delivery, cost, service and flexibility. Through this step, the internal factories are also forced to continuously improve their competitiveness.

In order to better cooperate with the company, some outsourcing factories specially hired relevant printmakers to print, confirm and produce directly according to photos. Now they can better master typesetting, greatly improve the design quality and shorten the preparation period before mass production.

Before the rapid distribution of products and the storage of bulk goods, the purchasing and production personnel have contacted the suppliers and learned the final production volume of bulk goods. The supply chain management team adjusts the pre-distribution plan according to the actual warehousing quantity and generates the distribution plan. After receiving the bulk goods, the warehouse scans, verifies and confirms them, picks and distributes them according to the distribution plan, and then delivers them to the third-party logistics for transportation. If the consignee is a franchisee, the relevant expenses shall be borne by the franchisee.

Sales and feedback sales terminals include franchisees, network marketing, etc. In addition to self-operated stores and shopping malls, you can also be an agent. Any individual with channels or relationships can "part-time" and use spare time and channels to help sell ZARA products. Because the interests of buyers, business teams and internal and external marketers are all linked to sales performance, they will make full use of all their relationships to stimulate their potential and turn "potential" into reality, so that all participants can benefit.

Continuous optimization of supply chain

With the joint efforts of everyone, after a month of operation and exploration, the overall framework of ZARA model has been basically established. It only takes 10 ~ 15 days from design concept to listing, while it takes 6 ~ 9 months or even longer for garment enterprises under the traditional operation mode; In the past, only two payments were made every year, but now there are new goods every week, constantly updating the store image and products, better serving customers and enhancing brand image; In the past, the general order quantity was several thousand, but now 100 pieces can be produced under an order (it can be smaller if the order is pursued); In the past, stores either had a mountain of inventory or couldn't make up the goods they wanted. High inventory and high shortage coexist. There are new goods every week now, so don't worry about the shortage of supply.

The whole supply chain "looks" smooth, but after careful analysis, it is found that the details are too "rough" and there are still many problems. After summarizing and analyzing the problems, the next step is to carry out targeted continuous optimization! Generally speaking, it is necessary to strengthen pre-planning, in-process monitoring and post-evaluation; We should seize the KPI of time, cost, quality, service and flexibility to optimize, especially the bottleneck link; Get rid of those activities that have no added value; Simplify unnecessary processes; Merge or synchronize some non-critical path processes; Reorganize some job processes to make them smoother and smarter.

Create a "borderless" enterprise

Customer "is a simple linear relationship. From an academic point of view, retail, logistics and distribution, production factory and supply chain are wrong or at least inaccurate words. It should be a complex system, an open system and a network system, not a simple chain. From the above analysis, it is not difficult to find that in the whole operation process, each link may have multiple identities and roles, which may be customers, sample clothing suppliers, marketers, cooperative manufacturers and so on. The enterprise boundary has been completely broken, and it is no longer a "raw material supplier".

Spanish ZARA relies on the intensive investment of its own enterprises to achieve the "cluster" effect, while enterprise A turns the potential into reality by integrating various idle resources, explores a set of successful models for the vast number of China garment enterprises, and builds borderless enterprises through an "infinite" supply chain to realize the real cluster effect.

key word

Agile is not the survival of the strong, but the survival of the fittest. Market demand and consumer demand change too fast, and those who adapt to the change can survive, so they should have agile adaptability.

Reliability In such a high-speed system, the instability of any link or the interference of random factors will cause interference or fatal impact on the whole supply chain, so it is necessary to improve the reliability and seamless integration of all links in the supply chain.

Benefit distribution mechanism (alliance) is a customer principle. In the end, everyone can only score if they sell well. They should not only pay attention to their downstream customers, but also pay attention to their customers. Moreover, they must be honest in order to play this game well and make the cake bigger and bigger. If the products sell well in the market, it will attract more and more franchisees or personnel to participate in the adaptive system, carry out self-hematopoiesis and form a harmonious forest system.

Communication needs a basic operation system at the operational level, including commodity basic data maintenance, supplier basic data maintenance, procurement management, distribution management, sales forecast, inventory management, sales management and so on. And dynamic monitoring, the entire supply chain is transparent. In addition to a strong formal system, it is more important to communicate between people and provide communication platforms, such as BBS, POPO group, telephone, fax or meetings, interviews and so on.

Source: Oxford Management Review

One of Zara's most successful fashion clothing brands in recent years: every year, consumers will go to its stores about 17 times, and the industry average is 3-4 times; One of the cornerstones of the operation of well-known fashion brands is to put exquisite advertisements in various fashion magazines, while Zara rarely advertises. It succeeded in getting everyone to talk about it, just like Starbucks.

Zara's success lies in that it has changed the economic model of the fast-loading industry. The clothing industry can be simply divided into two types: one is the top luxury brands such as LV, Gucci and Versace, which are positioned at the high-value end and their core assets are brands; One is Gap in the United States, and there are many shops in China, such as Benny Road. Zara creates a strange mixture between the two: they are closer to the former in brand image, but have the same economies of scale as the latter in economic model. The difference is that Gap's economies of scale take the route of "less money, more quantity and cheaper", while Zara's economies of scale take the route of "fast, small and more". Zara launches tens of thousands of clothes every year, the styles are synchronized with fashion, and the pricing is closer to the model of high-end brands.

Observing the Zara model, it is important to look at the operating system behind "fast, small and multi". In the clothing industry, there is a technical term called "lead time", which refers to the time required for a garment from design to sales. Zara greatly shortened the lead time, with the fastest lead time of 12 days. In contrast, the design gestation period of Gap alone is two or three months.

Clothing depreciates rapidly, depreciating by 0.7% every day, and computer products depreciate by 0. 1% every day. Therefore, shortening the lead time has multiple advantages: quickly responding to market trends, reducing clothing depreciation, clothing enterprises do not need to make a large number of ready-made clothes in advance, reducing inventory costs and inventory risks; Avoid producing clothes that are not popular with customers, so as to avoid clothing companies hoarding clothes due to estimation errors and avoid losses caused by discounts.

Zara didn't try to be the creator of fashion trends, but tried to be a quick responder to fashion trends: when fashion trends just appeared, she accurately identified and quickly launched the corresponding clothing styles, thus making a quick response to fashion trends.

The rapid response mode requires a fast supply chain: all fabrics purchased by Zara are not dyed, but dyed according to real-time demand. Zara chose to let her factory only do highly automated work, use high-tech production equipment to do dyeing, cutting and other work, and outsource labor-intensive work.

In order to respond quickly, Zara's procurement and production are carried out in Europe, and only 20% of the most basic styles of clothing are produced in low-cost areas such as Asia. Zara has a high-tech automated logistics distribution center, which can ensure that the trucks arrive in Europe within two days. In the United States and Japan, Zara even uses air transportation at all costs to improve speed.

For companies like Zara, retail is an important part of the whole business chain. Zara's retail is in a positive self-strengthening cycle of "quick purchase and quick sale": branches order twice a week according to the sales situation, which reduces the discount of inventory and reduces the inventory cost; The style update quickly strengthened its freshness and attracted consumers to patronize again and again; Quickly updating the goods in the store also ensures that they can meet the tastes of customers.

In his new book "Mode: Strategic Thinking and Development Mode of Retail Chain Industry", Professor Lang Xianping predicted that the future fashion industry would develop to "Zara mode".