ZARA, You Know What You Want When You Get Up.

Come from Spain The world famous clothing brand ZARA is known for its "quick response" in the fashion industry. Its successful operation mode has become the benchmark of the industry, and has become a famous teaching case in European and American business schools. Business Review called ZARA "Apple Computer in the fashion industry"; others also rated ZARA as "Swatch watch in the fashion industry". )

ZARA has won the success in fierce market competition with its rapid response ability. It has established 2200 women's clothing chains in 27 European countries and 55 countries and regions around the world. In 2004, the global operating income reached 4 billion 600 million euros, with a profit of 440 million euros. Reap profit The rate is 9.7%, which is even better than the 6.4% of GAP, the largest clothing chain in the United States.

"High speed, small batch and multi style" constitute ZARA's unusual way of production. The most successful thing for ZARA is to reduce the lead time from design to sales, and the lead time of ZARA is only 12 days. It guaranteed the first time to bring the most fashionable new clothes to the customers. Because of the long production cycle, the traditional clothing retailers can not change the design or add new styles at any time according to the seasonal changes. ZARA can change the quantity, design, fabric and color of the product at any time because of its fast production mode. Its speed is as fast as that of a more than 20 year old young man.

The biggest fashion Characteristic It is changeable that a movie and an album may change people's view of fashion, and the most touching part of fashion is just following fashion. When there are new popular elements in movies or TV media, ZARA can complete the imitation of star costumes or creative works of top costume designers in a matter of days. From the identification of fashion trends to the new fashions that cater to the trend of fashion, ZARA takes only two weeks, while the traditional production cycle takes 4-12 months. ZARA keeps pace with customers' pursuit of fashion and enables them to catch up with every fashionable fashion signal faster.

Compared with other clothing retailers, ZARA has a very small number of clothing production, which artificially created a scarcity. The more it is not easy to get, the more it can stimulate people's desire to buy. ZARA executes the strategy of always out of stock. For the same style of clothing, there are only a few stocks in the retail store. Perhaps because of your hesitation, you may miss the chance to finally own it, because you may see a new shelf tomorrow. This initial chagrin is a decisive purchase speed when customers are patronizing again.

ZARA does not focus on producing more quantities for each style, but focuses on the diversity of styles. ZARA produces more than 12000 garments every year. Compared with many of its competitors, ZARA can provide more choices in fashion. The ZARA store supplies two times a week, because there are few orders for the finished products. The store will update every 3-4 days, and it will always give people a sense of freshness. Keeping up with fashion trends, frequent updates and more choices has created the unique attraction of ZARA to customers, thus greatly increasing customer preferences and loyalty to ZARA.

In such a short lead time to complete the "small batch, multi style" clothing production, for most enterprises is almost "overnight", but ZARA did, and formed its unique business model. The IT system centered on information and communication technology is the key to the realization of ZARA's unique business model.

ZARA's information comes from a large number of fashion buyers who are distributed in bars, showrooms and other fashion venues. They collect the latest fashion information and report to headquarters in time. Meanwhile, ZARA stores will also timely feedback the sales report and customer demand information. All kinds of information about fashion trends and customers' opinions continue to enter the database of ZARA headquarters from all over the world every day. Designers can check the number of deliveries and daily sales volume on the same day, and use new information to generate new ideas and improve existing clothing styles. By accessing real-time information in the database, the designer and the production and operation team decide on what fabric, how to tailor and how to make a price for a specific style.

For a typical clothing retailer, different or incomplete size specifications and effective information of different products usually take several weeks to be added to their product design and approval process. But in the warehouse of ZARA, product information is universal and standardized. This enables ZARA to prepare the design quickly and accurately and to give clear production instructions to the clipping. ZARA's cutting system is also completed under the intervention of digital information system, accurate and fast.

The excellent product information and inventory management data system enables the ZARA team to manage thousands of fabrics, all kinds of decorations, and design lists and inventory items. ZARA's team can also use the information provided by the system to design garments with existing inventory instead of ordering raw materials and waiting for it to arrive.

ZARA owns 22 factories in Spain, and 50% of its products are completed through its own factories to ensure absolute speed. The remaining 50% of the product ZARA is outsourced to 400 small processing plants, which are responsible for a lot of tedious sewing. Moreover, a factory produces only one style, which ensures the specialization and speed of production. Of these 400 enterprises, 70% of them are in Europe, and mainly in Spain and Portugal. The convenience of geographical location enables these factories to respond quickly to ZARA orders, especially the unusual fashion styles. While the remaining 30% are mainly produced in Asia, ZARA places basic products or locally dominant products in these areas. This is also the key to ZARA's success.

ZARA's logistics distribution system is very developed. About 20 kilometers of underground conveyor belt delivers ZARA products to the cargo distribution center in La Coruna, Spain. The center has a very mature automated management software system. To ensure that every order arrives on time, ZARA uses optical reading tools to conduct product inspection and selects and inspected more than 60 thousand items per hour. The transport trucks in the logistics center continue to drive to Europe based on the fixed departure timetable. ZARA also has two air transport bases. Usually European stores can receive goods within 24 hours, and American stores need 48 hours, and Japan is 48 hours -72 hours. Under the intervention of information technology, the accuracy rate of ZARA shipment is as high as 98.9%, while the error rate is less than 0.5%.

Although speed is a magic weapon for ZARA to occupy the market, behind the "speed" is ZARA intensive intensive management and strong IT support. Information technology supported by high technology plays a great role in promoting the breakthroughs of traditional business models. In addition to ZARA in Spain, Sweden's H&M is also using another way of information management to explain another legend. For ZARA and H&M, it is a common feature of their success to have fast, multi style, small volume, and quickly and accurately occupy information resources.

The mode of operation of ZARA and H&M is worth thinking about by our enterprises. In today's "international competition of domestic market", whether we have the "quick and accurate" market response method will become a yardstick for measuring the core competitiveness of clothing brands. Behind the "fast and accurate" system, we can not do without the support of timely and effective information management system.

At present, most garment enterprises in China are still at a low level of informatization, and "quick response capability" is impossible to speak of. Due to the lack of timely information management tools, enterprises can not quickly and accurately understand the sales and inventory status of branches, stores and sales outlets. It is difficult to accurately distribute the stores and sales outlets, and it is also very difficult to predict and analyze sales. The traditional distribution system basically adopts manual operation. It takes a few days to make a basic form, not to mention the general statement. The leaders of the enterprise can not make decisions in time and accurately. Du Yuzhou, President of the China clothing association, pointed out that Chinese clothing enterprises need to improve their ability of quick reaction as soon as possible in order to improve the quality and grade of products, and timely complete the revolution of market prediction, marketing and management. Change the backward management thinking and business processing mode, so as to truly standardize the business process and achieve profit growth.

The demand for information management system in garment enterprises is increasing. On the one hand, it reflects that the leaders' understanding of information construction has been greatly improved. On the other hand, fierce market competition forces enterprises to apply information technology to improve the management level of enterprises. In accordance with the principles of "unified planning, unified standards, unified platforms and unified norms", many enterprises have applied information technology systems such as resource management system (ERP), supply chain management system (SCM), customer relationship management system (CRM) and auxiliary design manufacturing system (CAD/CAM) according to their respective characteristics and actual situations. A survey shows that enterprises that plan to apply information management systems in the near future account for about 40%.

1. Greatly improving the market resilience of enterprises.

The speed of product development is accelerated and the development cycle is shortened. Enterprises constantly introduce new products to better respond to the rapidly changing market demand, and achieve rapid response to the market. Enterprises formulate marketing plans in time, and arrange production guidance and shorten the delivery time. After the application of information management, especially after the ERP system, the management level of enterprises in the production process can be improved. For example, production scheduling is more reasonable, production scheduling is more flexible, production schedule can be timely tracked and controlled, and the speed of decision-making is also accelerated.

Two, effectively reduce the capital occupation of enterprises.

The application of information management in inventory can scientifically manage raw materials, finished products, semi products and so on, so as to keep the inventory of enterprises at a reasonable level and reduce the occupation of stock funds.

Three, improve product quality and reduce production cost in an all-round way.

With the adoption of information management, enterprises can effectively track and monitor the production process, so as to keep abreast of the quality of the products in the production process. The information system can alarm, feedback and deal with the quality problems in production, and make the management idea carried out through the system, thus ensuring the quality of products and reducing the cost.

Morning post news March 31st afternoon, Hotel Kunlun two multi-function hall. Lang Xianping, who was born in Taiwan, studied in the United States and lived in Hongkong, was the first to call the "China's clothing industry's think tank and the highest level theoretical research platform". In the opening ceremony, he threw out the idea that "there is no real sunset industry in the world, only the thinking of Sun Yang". The morning newspaper sent a Beijing correspondent to the seminar.

It was revealed that the forum organizers invited Lang Xianping to participate in the end of last year. "Call me at the end of last year to ask me to come.