Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A. is a Spanish multinational clothing company headquartered
in Arteixo, Galicia.
It is made up of almost a hundred companies dealing in activities related to textile design,
production and distribution.
Amancio Ortega, Spain's richest man, and the world's third richest man, is the founder
and current largest shareholder.
The current chairman of Inditex is Pablo Isla.
Inditex, the biggest fashion group in the world, operates over 6,200 stores worldwide
and owns brands like Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius, Zara,
Tempe, and Uterqüe, and also a low-cost brand Lefties.
The majority of its stores are corporate-owned; Franchises are only conceded in countries
where corporate properties can not be foreign-owned.
The group designs and manufactures almost everything by itself, and new designs are
dispatched twice a week to Zara stores.
Most manufacturing is now in low labour cost countries, mainly in Morocco, China, and Turkey,
although much production continues in Spain and Portugal, particularly for its Zara brand.
In addition, Inditex has a factory for shoe design, production and distribution in the
town of Elche, on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
History The company started by introducing a new concept
of fashion design: instead of long-lasting pieces of clothing, they offered a great variety
at affordable prices.
In the beginning, Zara became famous by offering clothing at low prices and then slowly worked
its way up to match the quality of today's best brands.
The group started its activity in 1963 as a dress maker, but it wasn't until 1975 that
Zara shop opened its doors in 1975 in A Coruña, the city which saw the group's early beginnings
and which is now home to its central offices.
The international expansion of the group began in 1988, with Inditex opening its first foreign
store in Oporto, Portugal.
Today, Inditex's stores can be seen in places like New York's Fifth Avenue, Milan's Piazza
Duomo, London's Regent Street and Oxford Street, Frankfurt's Zeil, Shanghai's Nanjing West
Road, Tokyo's Shibuya, Istanbul's Nişantaşı, Seoul's Myeong-dong, and Vienna's Kärntner
Straße.
In the 1990s, Inditex began creating or acquiring subsidiaries to manage different collections:
Bershka, Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Stradivarius.
In May 2001, Inditex turned into a publicly traded company, being valued at US$8 billion.
Inditex won the 2006 Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for their innovative
and successful implementation of information technology to drastically decrease the time
it takes to get new merchandise from the design stage to the in-store stage.
In 2008, Inditex launched Uterqüe, the new accessories brand of the company.
Three inaugural flagship stores were opened in Madrid, Barcelona and A Coruña.
On 22 September 2008, Inditex opened its 4,000th store in the Ginza in Tokyo, considered one
of the most important shopping areas in the world.
In 2010, Zara had sales of € 12.5 billion, with only twice a year newspaper advertisements.
On 20 April 2011, the first Zara flagship opened in Australia.
Thus, the Inditex group was present for the first time on five continents, and in 86 countries.
After the 2013 Savar building collapse, Inditex was one of the thirty-eight companies who
signed the Accord on Factory and Building Safety in Bangladesh.
Subsidiaries
Zara - Flagship store.
It encompasses many different styles, from daily clothes, more informal, to the more
serious or formal, through dresses and suits for festival events.
Fashion for women, men and children.
Zara Kids - Kids Clothing from 0 to 14 years old.
Pull and Bear - This brand focuses on casual, laid-back clothing and accessories for young
people with a very urban style, at accessible prices.
Bershka - Starting in 1998, this store began distributing fashion for girls, and, more
recently, for boys too.
It also has a youthful style, although not as urban as Pull & Bear.
Massimo Dutti - The highlights of this chain are more elegant, classic, and studied designs,
for daily and formal clothes.
It is more expensive than the rest of stores of the group.
It offers fashion for women, men and, recently, for children.
Stradivarius – This brand has an innovative concept in fashion, targeting young women
with clothing garments and accessories.
Oysho - Women's homewear and undergarments.
Zara Home - Domestic merchandise Uterqüe - Accessories and garments
Tempe - Footwear Corporate affairs
Headquarters Inditex headquarters are located in Sabón
industrial park in Arteixo, a small industrial town in the A Coruña metropolitan area.
Shareholding The majority shareholders of Inditex are its
co-founders - Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera; Ortega owns 59% of the company through
Gartler, S.L. and Partler, S.L. and Mera's heirs own 6% of the company through Rosp Corunna
Participaciones Empresariales, S.L..
References
External links
Official Official website
Inditex on Facebook Inditex on Twitter
Financial Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A.
— Bolsa de Madrid Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A.
— Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A. — Google
Finance Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A.
— Hoover's Inditex companies grouped at OpenCorporates
Articles Zara's Big Idea: What the World's Top Fashion
Retailer Tells Us About Innovation, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 13 November 2012.
How Zara Grew Into the World’s Largest Fashion Retailer, Suzy Hansen, New York Times, 9 November
2012.