Zara opens 24,000 sq. ft. store in DLF Mall of India

The Inditex Group’s flagship brand, Zara, will open its doors to customers in Noida at DLF Mall of India on 18 May, 2016.
The commercial space which spans over 24,472 sq. ft. houses all of Zara’s clothing collections – Woman, Man, Kids – apart from featuring the latest Spring/Summer 2016 collection.
Store Design Concept
The design of the store features Zara’s latest global store concept, which combines beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability.
A sleek white surface spans the ceiling and walls so that the limits within the store are no longer defined. This helps to create the illusion of space and freedom, even as lighting and a neutral backdrop help the garments to take center stage.
The space invites the customer to enjoy as never before, encouraging him to experience, feel, touch, observe and interact with the merchandise.
The Spanish fashion retailer had recently leased 50,000 sq ft carpet space in South Mumbai’s most prime location – Flora Fountain. The space – the largest retail space in India – has been leased on the ground floor of the Ismail Building, which is diagonally opposite HSBC India headquarters, located in Fort.
The Zara Story
Zara is a Spanish clothing and accessories retailer based in Arteixo, Galicia, and founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega and Rosalía Mera. It is the flagship chain store of the Inditex group, the world’s largest apparel retailer. The fashion group also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, Uterqüe, Stradivarius, Oysho and Bershka.
Zara was described by Louis Vuitton Fashion Director Daniel Piette as “possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world.
In 1988, the company started its international expansion through Porto, Portugal.
In 1989, it entered the United States, and then France in 1990. During the 1990s, Zara expanded to Mexico (1992), Greece, Belguim and Sweden (1993). In the early 2000s, Zara opened its first stores in Japan and Singapore (2002), Russia and Malaysia (2003), China, Morocco, Estonia, Hungary and Romania (2004), the Philippines, Costa Rica, and Indonesia (2005), South Korea (2008), India (2010), and South Africa and Australia (2011).
The India Story
Zara opened its first store in India in the year 2010. It is operated by Inditex-Trent, a joint venture between Spain’s Inditex and the Tata Group.
In August 2015, Zara opened an outlet in Hyderabad in a mall taking its store count in India to 17 until then.
Profits in India
Zara became the first apparel brand in India to cross the $100-million sales mark, five years after it opened its first shop in India. Inditex Trent, the joint venture between Zara brand owner Inditex and Tata Group’s retail arm Trent, posted 24 per cent annual growth in sales for the year ended March 2015 at Rs 721 crore ($114 million), Trent said in its annual report.
Average sales per store of Zara is about Rs 45 crore a year, far more than top apparel brands such as Louis Philippe, Levi’s and Marks & Spencer, and even slightly higher than department store chains Shoppers Stop and Lifestyle.
Most of Zara’s back-end and merchandise sourcing are handled by Inditex, while the Tata expertise is mainly for identifying real estate and locations. Inditex Trent has replicated in India a model that has worked for Zara globally — creating affordable, copycat versions of the latest fashions or designer wear and making them available to shoppers in double-quick time. Inditex controls almost every bit of its operations, from design to distribution.
If a new style is not a hit within a week, it goes off the shelves of over 2,000 Zara stores worldwide. The brand will face intense competition from similarly-priced, fast fashion rivals such as Gap, which entered a month ago and H&M, which will launch stores soon. As the world’s second most populated country, India is an attractive market for US brands, especially since youngsters in the country are increasingly embracing western-style clothing.