(Bloomberg) -- Inditex SA may be the biggest fashion company you’ve never heard of. It’s the $183 billion Spanish business behind global retail powerhouse Zara—the brand known for rapid delivery of runway-inspired, affordable clothes—and some bizarre marketing imagery to promote them.
For the Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary Inside the Secret World of Zara, the company opened its doors so we could witness the lightning-fast logistics operation that’s bolstered its business. Zara is synonymous with what has been referred to as “fast fashion” and is responsible for as much as three quarters of its parent company’s annual sales. But the industry has been bad news for the planet, responsible for a significant amount of carbon emissions and plastic waste. Add to that competition from Asia, and Zara—as with retailers like it—may soon face a reckoning.
Zara is one of the world’s most successful retailers and the biggest company in Spain. While parent Inditex also owns outlets such as Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear, Zara is without question its most valuable brand. The key to Zara’s success lives within its centralized supply chain, a place much less glamorous than its stores.
Alongside rival H&M, Zara has influenced how much of the developed world thinks about shopping for clothes. But today’s challenges come less in the form of fighting for market share, and more in balancing the devastating impact the fashion industry has on the environment, and a growing base of competition from rivals such as Shein and Temu. Inside the Secret World of Zara unpacks the challenges fast fashion giants like Zara now face.
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