Fast Fashion, as the name suggests, is contemporary fashion trend that appears in the market at a point and vanishes off within a short period of time and also takes a little time to be produced. But how far is it beneficial? What are advantages and disadvantages that Zara has in comparison to its competitors? The following article deals with these queries and the disadvantages of fast fashion.
Advantages of Zara
1. Short Production Time – ZARA can react quickly to recent trends and thus offers more fashionable clothes. Consequently, creates an incentive for the customers to visit the shops more often.
2. More styles – More choice, and more chances for ZARA of hitting it right.
3. Lower quantities – Scarce supply. A customer feels that he/she is going to wear something unique.
In the recent discussions me and my colleagues were discussing Zara company because it has unique company features in comparison to its competitors – it can react, produce and allocate in their shops a new fashion line for a period less than 30 days. Zara produces every 2-3 weeks a new fashion line and creates more than 40000 designs per year. In Zara stores, customers can always find new products —but unfortunately for the customers they are in limited supply. For that reason, a customer buys a garment because she knows that if she comes tomorrow that garment won’t be there. Fashion specialists assert that this is the key marketing strategy that distinguishes Zara from its competitors. I as a customer I’ve got the sense of feeling myself exclusive, since only a few items are on display, even though the fact that stores are pretty spacious. Recently I have conducted a survey about shopping in Zara in my dormitory. People participating in it think in the following way when they are shopping in Zara – “This pullover fits me, and there is one on the rack. If I don’t buy it now, I’ll lose my chance.” Zara’s production speed allows it to have such a marketing strategy. An interest fact that I have found recently is that this amazing firm expands extremely fast-almost every day one Zara shop is opened. The above-mentioned business strategy force Zara’s competitors to struggle for the market and to consider their business strategies. In my opinion, Zara is the best place for people who want to wear a for example a jacket for 100 euro that looks like a jacket for 3000 euro. Why I think that? Just take a look at the disadvantages.
Disadvantages of Zara
1. Zara’s focus largely lies on imitation of original products which misleads the customer. Those who are aware of this replication or who have lack of fashion consciousness do not suffer, but those interested in purchasing original brands are deceived by these fast fashion trends.
2. Another negative aspect of fast fashion is, it stands for inexpensiveness and actually it is not true.
According to the first disadvantage I have read many articles in which is stated that Zara is copying but I wasn’t sure till one day I went out shopping and I saw similarities between Zara and Balmain fashion.
Obviously Zara’s men collection was inspired by Balmain. It would be rude to say that Zara has stolen the Balmain collection but it definitely deserves punishment. Zara is a firm with enormous budget but probably its 200 designers are not creative enough that’s why they just copy and paste. But they cannot copy normally because when you closely examine a garment from Balmain for 3000 euro jacket all the details are extremely elaborated even the buttons. Also notice that Balman clothes has no folds on the upper part of the sleeves in comparison to the copy of Zara.
Second disadvantage that I have found in the web is that in many case studies is stated that Zara fashion is very cheap.For instance, the group members participating in this research argue that is not true, because it is relatively expensive in comparison to competitors like H&M. The same information I received from the research I have conducted in my dormitory. Two members of the second semester IBMAN group in the Berlin School of Economics and Law-Mr.Kronsbein and Mr.Cregelin have conducted another research in Berlin to gather data about the effectiveness of sales of the above-mentioned firms. The outcome was surprising there were at least twice as much people with H&M bags, as with Zara ones in the same day and hour. Although, there are small group of posh people with higher incomes which prefer to buy Louis Vuitton , Versace and for them Zara is relatively cheap. In my view, Zara is overpriced because the real price of garment do not exceeds more than 2-10 euro and it is normal to be sold for price between 20 – 30 euro. For that reason, I and the majority of people that were questioned by me prefer to go to H&M because this firm has clothes with relatively high quality and they are sold for lower prices. Although Zara has many disadvantages but it is still one of the biggest retailer of clothes in world and I respect it for that achievement.
