Comments on: Zara and Lean Retail

By: Recalibration, fast vs slow fashion, something to offend everyone

Recalibration, fast vs slow fashion, something to offend everyone — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:36:37 +0000

[...] lot of people think they’re lean (fast fashion is lean) because they’re running their operations on a shoe string. Lean manufacturing isn’t a [...]

By: Aynura

Aynura — Wed, 30 May 2007 01:39:08 +0000

Do you have any information, how I could be Zara’s
distributor?

Thank you in advance,

Aynura

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:54:19 +0000

Do you have any information on lean six sigma in the retail sector

Lol…many of us in Lean would take umbrage at your placement of “six sigma” after “Lean”. Lean is an entirely different philosophy. I realize a lot of enterprises don’t want to leave six sigma by the wayside after having invested so heavily in it (I’m not the only one who thinks the green-black belt thing is lame ) but Lean is a cleaner, older and more holistic philosophy.

There is a book you may find useful, it’s called _A Stitch in Time_ by Abernathy et al. I have it but haven’t read it yet. It’s all about “lean retail”. Personally, I cannot see how the consumption end can be substantively improved without tracking backwards into the supply chain. If you wanted to go vertical, then minimally you’d need to make serious intellectual commitments (and more, of course) to get into our end of the business.

(I’m looking for warehouse / reditribution centers).

My co blogger Miracle has written quite extensively on this topic. Use the search box on this site with the key words “distribution”, “fulfillment” and “product identification”.

I read that Tesco cut throughput time from 20 days to 5? Is that correct? Is this a one off example or can you provide other retail companies that have reduced throughput time by half (who are these guys???).

I’m out of my element in these matters. I don’t know much about retail, much less lean retail. Coming from the back end, I have a hard time seeing how retailers can go lean -really- without backtracking and helping their suppliers go lean too. Anything else is only lip service; flogging suppliers -who must in effect, warehouse excess inventory to supply retail on demand, which is definitely NOT lean- to prop up the front end of the business. There is no other way. I’d suggest reading _Lean Thinking_ for a discussion of what Lean is as opposed to the darling distortions promulgated by glee (and greed) of the potentiality of increased margins .

By: Bill Longfellow

Bill Longfellow — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:11:59 +0000

Do you have any information on lean six sigma in the retail sector (I’m looking for warehouse / reditribution centers).

I read that Tesco cut throughput time from 20 days to 5? Is that correct?

Is this a one off example or can you provide other retail companies that have reduced throughput time by half (who are these guys???).

Thanks,
Bill

By: Neil Adams

Neil Adams — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:43:01 +0000

I want to start my own label, where can i find a good quality garment contractor to do small groups? like” gap like clothing”

By: natlee

natlee — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:10:21 +0000

I think that the product has gotten better. How many times have you bought something in a dept. store full price with a designers label made in chine and fell apart.

By: Jinjer Markley

Jinjer Markley — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 17:09:36 +0000

If you’re going to compare ZARA to an American apparel manufacturer, L.A.’s “Forever 21″ seems like a more apt comparison than Gap. Styles change really rapidly, and they target the teen crown ( with plety of spillover for the young at heart) I don’t watch TV so I can’t rule out commercials, but since I’ve never seen an ad in any magazine, I assume they don’t spend much on advertising. They recently opened a huge flagship store in downtown SF (across the street from Gap’s, actually!) after sales at local malls proved very brisk. I don’t know anything about their manufacturing practices, though. Except that the quality is really poor… (the kids don’t care–they’ll be bored of the style in 3 months, anyway. Or so the rationale goes.)

By: MW

MW — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:55:02 +0000

>>.It seems to me that failing to ship direct from the contractor to the store could be a weak link in the entire chain; it’s muda for lack of a better term. It seems to me that having Zara staff assigned to each contractor location would facilitate the final steps and from there ship to stores.<

Knowing what I know about small US based contractors and retail store preparation (SKUs, tagging, entering in POS systems), that would be a tough task to manage here in the US, I can only imagine it would be tougher in other small sewing contractor shops where they are producing product for different parts of the world.

In a perfect world, it would be a great value added service if contractors could offer such features, but considering how antiquated most are, with respect to computer and retail technology, it seems far fetched.

When you have a domestic industry built entirely upon the task of taking garments from a contractor and getting them ready for retail, you start to realize that could be a huge undertaking.

I’m just wondering how you could make that work. It would be a flawless system if you could, but it seems logistically easier to just have one central location for distribution.

By: Carol

Carol — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:26:30 +0000

This info would never be accessible to me if I had to try to find it myself – you’re not only an amazing resource, but you have cogent insights and comments!