Inditex

Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A.
Type Sociedad Anónima
Traded as BMADITX
Industry Fashion, retail
Founded Arteixo, Spain (1985 (1985))
Founder(s) Amancio Ortega
Rosalía Mera
Headquarters Arteixo, Spain
Key people Pablo Isla (Chairman and CEO)
Ignacio Fernandez (CFO)
Products Clothing, accessories
Revenue €12.53 billion (2010)[1]
Operating income €2.290 billion (2010)[1]
Profit €1.732 billion (2010)[1]
Total assets €9.826 billion (end 2010)[1]
Total equity €6.423 billion (end 2010)[1]
Employees 100,140 (end 2010)[1]
Subsidiaries Zara, Pull and Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Uterqüe, Tempe
Website www.inditex.com

Industria de Diseño Textil, S.A. ("Textile Design Industries"), more commonly known as Inditex, is a large Spanish corporation and the world's largest fashion group. It is made up of almost a hundred companies dealing with activities related to textile design, production and distribution. Amancio Ortega, Spain's richest man, and the world's 7th richest man, is the founder and current chairman of Inditex.

Inditex runs over more than 5,000 stores worldwide[2] and owns brands like Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius, Zara Home, Tempe and Uterqüe, and also a low cost brand Lefties. The majority of stores are corporate-owned; Franchises are only conceded in countries where corporate properties can not be foreign-owned (in some Middle Eastern countries, for example).

The group designs and manufactures almost everything by itself, and new designs are dispatched twice a week to Zara stores.

Inditex headquarters are located in Arteixo, a small industrial town in the metropolitan area of A Coruña, Galicia, in northwestern Spain. Originally almost all merchandise was manufactured there. Now most production has shifted to low-cost labor countries such as Morocco and China. In addition they have another factory mainly responsible for shoe design, production and distribution in Elche, a well-known town of the Alicante province on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

Contents

History

The first Zara shop opened its doors in 1975 in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain), the city which saw the group's early beginnings and which is now home to its central offices. Today Inditex's stores can be seen in places like New York's Fifth Avenue, Milan's Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 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, Sydney's Pitt Street Mall and Singapore's Orchard Road

In the 90s, 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 $8 billion (€9 billion at the time) [3]

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 (Serrano Street), Barcelona (Passeig de Gràcia) 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.

On April 20, 2011 opened the first Zara flagship in Australia. Thus, the Inditex group was present for the first time in 5 continents, and in 78 countries. Today Inditex is the biggest fashion group in the world.

Subsidiaries

Company No. of shops (January 2011)[1] Year of creation
Zara 1,518 1975
Zara Kids - Kiddy´s Class 205 2001
Bershka 720 1998
Pull and Bear 682 1991
Massimo Dutti 530 1995 (acquired)
Stradivarius 593 1999 (acquired)
Oysho 432 2001
Zara Home 284 2003
Uterqüe 80 2008
Tempe 2 2011
TOTAL 5,046

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Annual Report 2010" (in Spanish) (PDF). Inditex. http://www.inditex.com/en/downloads/11_informe_gestion_grupo.pdf. Retrieved 25 April 2011. 
  2. ^ "Grupo INDITEX - Nuestro Grupo". Inditex. 2008-11-10. http://www.inditex.com/es/quienes_somos/nuestro_grupo. Retrieved 2008-11-10. 
  3. ^ Inside Zara Forbes Global

External links