Fashion and Zara Essay Example for Free

Fashion and Zara Essay At the announcement of her engagement to Spains Crown Prince Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano wore a chic white pant suit. Within a few weeks, hundreds of European women sported the same look. Welcome to a fashion, a trend that sees clothing retailers frequently purchasing small quantities of merchandise to stay on top of emerging trends. In this world of hot today, gauche tomorrow, no company does fast fashion better than Zara international. Shoppers in over 70 countries are fans of Zara’s knack for bringing the latest styles from sketchbook to clothing rack at lightning speed and reasonable prices. ot replenished. Instead they are replaced with new designs to create scarcity value-shoppers cannot be sure that designs in store one day will be available the next. Store managers track sales data with handheld computers. They can reorder hot items in less than an hour. This lets Zara know what’s selling and what’s not; when look doesn’t pan out, designers promptly put together new products. According to Dilip Patel, U. K. commercial director for lnditex, new arrivals are rushed to store sales floors still on the black plastic hangers used in shipping. Shoppers who are in the know recognize these designs as the newest of the new; soon after, any items left over are rotated to Zaras standard wood hangers. Inside and out, Zaras stores are specially dressed to strengthen the brand. lnditex considers this to be of the greatest importance because that is where shoppers ultimately decide which fashions make the cut. In a faux shopping street in the basement of the companys headquarters, stylists craft and photograph eye-catching layouts that are e-mailed every two weeks to store managers for replication. Zara stores sit on some of the worlds glitziest shopping streets—including New Yorks Fifth Avenue, near the flagship stores of leading international fashion brands— which make its reasonable prices stand out. Inditex gives people the most up-to-date fashion at accessible prices, so it is a real alternative to high-end fashion lines, said Luca Solca, senior research analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein in London. That is good news for Zara as many shoppers trade down from higher-priced chains. Catfights on the Catwalk Zara is not the only player in fast fashion. Competition is fierce; but Zaras overwhelming success (recent sales were over $13 billion) has the competition scrambling to keep up. San Francisco-based Gap, which had been the largest independent clothing retailer by revenue until Zara bumped them to second place in 2009, recently posted a 23% decline in full-year sales and had plans to open a modest 50 new stores. Only time will tell if super-chic Topshops entry into the American market causes a wrinkle in Zaras success. Some fashion analysts are referring to all of this as the democratization of fashion: bringing high(eR) fashion to low(er) income shoppers. According to James Hurley, a senior research analyst with New York-based Telsey Advisory Group LLC, big-box discount stores such as Target and Wal-Mart are emulating Zaras ability to study emerging fashions and knock out look-a- likes in a matter of weeks. In general: Hurley said, the fashion cycle is becoming sharper and more immediately accessible. In Fast Fashion, Moments Matter Because style-savvy customers expect shorter and shorter delays from runway to store, Zara International employs a creative team of more than 200 professionals to help it keep up with the latest fashions. It takes just two weeks for the company to up-date existing garments and get them into its stores; new pieces hit the market twice a week. Defying the recession with its cheap-and-chic Zara clothing chain, Zaras parent company Inditex posted strong sales gains. Low prices and a rapid response to fashion trends are enabling it to challenge Gap, Inc. , for top ranking among global clothing vendors. The improved results highlight how Zaras formula continues to work even in the economic downturn. The chain specializes in lightning-quick turnarounds of the latest designer trends at prices tailored to the young—about $27 an item. Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette described Zara as possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world. Inditex Group shortens the time from order to arrival by utilizing a complex system of just-in-time production and inventory reporting that keeps Zara ahead. Their distribution centers can have items in European stores within 24 hours of receiving an order, and in American and Asian stores in under 48hours. â€Å"Theyre a fantastic case study in terms of how they manage to get product to their stores so quick, said Stacey Cartwright, CFO of Burberry Group PLC. We are mindful of their techniques. lnditexs history in fabrics manufacturing made it good business sense to internalize as many points in the supply chain as possible. Inditex controls design, production, distribution, and retail sales to optimize the flow of goods, without having to share profits with wholesalers or intermediary partners. Customers win by having access to new fashions while theyre still fresh off the runway. During a Madonna concert tour in Spain, Zaras quick turnaround let young fans at the last show wear Madonnas outfit from the first one. Twice a week Zaras finished garments are shipped to logistical centers that all simultaneously distribute products to stores worldwide. These small production batches help the company avoid the risk of oversupply. Because batches always contain new products, Zara’s stores perpetually energize their inventories. Most clothing lines are A Single Fashion Culture With a network of over 1,600 stores around the world, Zara International is Indites’s largest and most profitable brand, bringing home 77% of international sales and nearly 67% of revenues. The first Zara outlet opened shop in 1975 in La. Coruna. It remained solely a Spanish chain until opening a store in Oporto, Portugal, in 1988. The brand reached the United States and France in 1989 and 1990 with outlets in New York and Paris, respectively. Zara went into mainland China in 2001 and expanded into India in 2009. Essential to Zaras growth and success are lnditexs 100 plus textile design, manufacturing, and distribution companies that employ more than 80,000 workers. The lnditex group began in 1963 when Amancio Ortega Gaona, chairman and founder of Inditex, got his start in textile manufacturing. After a period of growth, he assimilated Zara into a new holding company, Industria de Diseno TextiI. Inditex has a tried-andtrue strategy for entering new markets: start with a handful of stores and gain a critical mass of customers. Generally, Zara is the first lnditex chain to break ground in new countries, paving the way for the groups other brands, including Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Bershka. lnditex farms out much of its garment production to specialist companies, located on the Iberian Peninsula, which it often supplies with its own fabrics. Although some pieces and fabrics are purchased in Asia—many of them not dyed or only partly finished—the company manufactures about half of its clothing in its hometown of La Coruna, Spain. HM, one of Zaras top competitors, uses a slightly different strategy. Around one quarter of its stock is made up of fast-fashion items that are designed in-house and farmed out to independent factories. As at Zara, these items move quickly through the stores and are replaced often by fresh designs. But HM also keeps a large inventory of basic, everyday items sourced from cheap Asian factories. lnditex CEO Pablo Isla believes in cutting expenses wherever and whenever possible. Zara spends just 0. 3% of sales on ads, making the 3-4% typically spent by rivals seem excessive in comparison. Isla disdains markdowns and sales as well. Few can criticize the results of Islas frugality. Inditex recently opened 439 stores in a single year and was simultaneously named Retailer of the Year during the World Retailer Congress meeting, after raking in net profits of almost $2 billion. Perhaps most important in an industry based on image, Inditex secured bragging rights as Europes largest fashion retailer by overtaking HM. According to Jose Castellano, lnditexs deputy chairman, the group plans to double in size in the coming years while making sales of more than $15 billion. He envisions most of this growth taking place in Europe—especially in trend-savvy Italy. Fashion of the Moment Although Inditexs dominance of fast fashion seems virtually complete, it isnt without its challenges. For instance, keeping production so close to home becomes difficult when an ncreasing number of Zara stores are far-flung across the globe. The efficiency of the supply chain is coming under more pressure the farther abroad they go, notes Nirmalya Kumar, a professor at London Business Schoo1. Inditex plans to launch its Zara online store in the United States in 2011. There is every indication that it will do well. A Zara application for the iPhone has been downloaded by more pro spective clients in the United States than in any other market, according to chief executive Pablo Isla—more than a million iPhone users in just three months. In 2010 Zara rolled out its online store in six European countries and plans to progressively add the remaining countries where Zara operates. Analysts worry that lnditexs rapid expansion may bring undue pressure to its business. The rising number of overseas stores, they warn, adds cost and complexity and is straining its operations. Inditex may no longer be able to manage everything from Spain. But Inditex isnt worried. By closely managing costs, lnditex says its current logistics system can handle its growth until 2012. Jose Luis Nueno of IESE, a business school in Barcelona, agrees that Zara is here to stay. Consumers have become more demanding and more arbitrary, he says—and fast fashion is better suited to these changes. But does Zara International have what it takes to succeed in the hypercompetitive world of fast fashion? Or is the company trying to expand too quickly? 1. In what ways are elements of the classical management and behavioral management approaches evident at Zara International? Specify exactly which elements are evident and how they are evident. 2. How can the systems theory and the theory of contingency thinking explain the success of some of Zaras distinctive practices?  List specific points as to how these theories are directly or indirectly related to Zaras practices. 3. Zaras CEO has asked your management consulting firm for advice on how the firm can make immediate improvements to stay ahead of competition. You must choose one of the consultants mentioned in Chapter 2 for this job (ex: Frederick Taylor, Max Weber, Mary Parker Follett). Which one/s would you assign to Zara, and why? Explain your option in detail by discussing exactly what points of the consultant from his/her well-known theories are applicable to Zara and how these may be applied to the company in modern day. . Discuss each of your suggested improvements for Zara in detail. (More specific information, examples). 5. Gather the latest information on competitive trends in the apparel industry, and on Zaras latest actions and innovations. Then answer the following: a. Is the firm continuing to do well? What makes you say so? (List statistics of competition, reviews, etc. Cite sources. ) b. Is Zara adapting in ways needed to stay abreast of both its major competition and the pressures of a changing global economy? What makes you say so?

Adolphus Huxleys Hyperion to a Satyr :: Adolphus Huxley Hyperion Satyr Essays

Adolphus Huxley's "Hyperion to a Satyr" Throughout the ages, there have been many ways to identify a person's social standing. Possessions such as homes, cars, and others, help to establish a person's place insociety. There are other ways also. Education, and a person's speech patternsare other ways to do this. But in "Hyperion to a Satyr," Adolphus Huxleypresents his view that hygiene also played an integral part. Clearly, thisdoesn't hold as true in these times, but perhaps in an earlier era thiswas an accurate measurement of wealth. But what role did hygiene play tosegregate peoplethroughout history? This question will be analyzed byapplying the meaningof metaphors used by Huxley. This article contains Huxley's views on many controversial subjects and their relationship todirt. But the most prominent comparison was between the social classesand the level of hygiene associated with each one. Mr. Huxley goes on toillustrate this difference with a variety of metaphors. He talks abouthow this view changed throughout history, and how great people tried toinfluence social changewith implementation of their plans for widespreadequality in cleanliness. This paper willbegin analyzing the relationship between social classdistinctio n and hygiene using the metaphoric analysis method. Thiswill be done by first analyzing Huxley's piece as a whole, by analyzingboth text and metaphors. Hopefully this will reveal his true meaning ofthe piece. Next will be the identification of various metaphors that pertainto the research question. Then the metaphors will be broken down into thetenors and vehicles. After that, they will be analyzed and sorted by meaning.By doing this, hopefully the research question will be better explained,and the relationship between cleanliness and upper class will be clarified. Huxley's " Hyperion to a Satyr" is a piece that discusses the class separation system and how the concept of cleanliness and uncleanliness has helped to increase thegap between the different social classes. Huxley feels that, because therichwere able to afford the luxuries of living "clean" lives and the poorcouldnot, that this helped to further separate the classes. He uses manymetaphorsto prove this point and expound on the relationship between socialclassesand hygiene. Now, to understand Huxley’s view on the research question, we need to isolate the different metaphors used: bathing was a badgeof class distinction, the gulf between rulers and ruled, from the peakof their superior... cleanliness, they were creatures of an entirely differentspecies, it was only the blessed pigs, and a tithe of their populationto untouchability.

Buddhism and Christianity as Social Reform Movements

Buddhism and Christianity are two great religions in the world that made a lot of contributions to the development of human beings in all aspects of life. These two religions may be worlds apart doctrinally and institutionally, but in their works for the betterment of human beings and the society, they are like wings that work together for the advancement and progress of civilizations. Buddhism and Christianity both have founders whose main teaching is the purification of the human heart.When human beings are defiled from selfishness, greed, and other wrongdoings, they will always be living in harmony not only with others but also with the environment that they are into. Both Jesus and the Buddha emphasized on the purity of the human heart. It is the heart that is important, it is the treasures of the heart that is more precious that any other wealth in the world. This is what Jesus and the Buddha wanted for people to realize to achieve a life of purpose and happiness, thus, Jesus an d the Buddha are very similar types of social reformers.Jesus and the Buddha are both great teachers that sought spiritual transformations. They both live in a time when people are ignorant of the true nature of life. The societal conditions that Jesus and the Buddha are into enabled them to seek and teach the wisdom of enlightenment, and that the value of compassion is central to the teaching of Jesus and the Buddha in attaining this enlightened path. The societal conditions during the time when Buddha and Jesus lived were characterized by chaos and greed as well as poverty conditions that made people suffered gravely.Jesus and the Buddha believe that all these sufferings that people experience are rooted on people’s ignorance on the fact that they themselves caused those problems. Human heart is full of impurities, and the only way to purify it according to the Buddha is to free oneself from earthly desires. Jesus also led an ascetic life together with his disciples, denoun cing all worldly wealth to pursue a life of spiritual transformations. Both Jesus and the Buddha advocated for radical changes in the common practices of the people in those days.The conditions during the time when Buddha preached his teaching were characterized by severe poverty, sickness and tribal wars that caused a lot of casualties. These conditions were very similar with what Jesus also experienced in his time. In responding to these societal conditions, both Jesus and the Buddha taught that people should cultivate compassion and love in their heart. It is only through selfless love that people will tolerate and respect one another.Both Jesus and the Buddha tried to fix the social problems that caused people to suffer as well as humanity’s animalistic tendencies like anger and greed, through a reformation in values and spiritual transformation. The Christian golden rule saying, â€Å"Do not do unto others what you do not want others do unto you† is very similar w ith what Buddha emphasized, â€Å"Treat others as yourself†. In these passages, one can see that Jesus and the Buddha gives importance to people’s actions and attitude towards others.People should not incur hatred in their hearts as this is similar to hating the self. One should treat other people in a way that will not hurt or belittle them as this would mean belittling oneself. Jesus and the Buddha said that when other people try to hurt you, you should not fight back with anger and hate, because fire cannot be extinguished by fire. A true human being has to be mindful of his words and deeds so as not to hurt others. This holds true with the law of karma.Whatever you do will always go back to you be it good or bad, depending on the causes you made. In Christianity, it is imperative for human beings to cultivate the self through the path of righteousness. In the same manner, Buddhism’s law on morality is highly depicted in the Christianity’s Ten Commandm ents. Buddhism and Christianity are closely related in the way they view the kind of society that we should be living in and should aspire for.Jesus and the Buddha describe an ideal society as a place where conflict does not exist and equality is always in the mind of the people. An ideal society values justice, freedom and morality. Nobody will experience sufferings; no one will have to endure cycles of poverty, disasters and epidemics. Social change begins when a person tries to rededicate all his or her effort to an intensified ethical commitment, to something that causes the person to develop more wisdom and compassion.These two religions always emphasized brotherly love towards other people, to treat other people as equal to oneself. Jesus emphasized that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, and Buddha also espoused the belief that in every human being, the Buddha nature exists regardless of race, color and culture. Both Christianity and Buddhism flowered during the time when everything seemed to be so hopeless and defiled. Both religions existed to correct people’s misconceptions of the reality, to lead people to the right path of peace and happiness.In conclusion, Jesus and the Buddha are very similar social reformers and that these two influential figures were truly great people who advocated for a just and humane society based on the values attributed to love, compassion, wisdom and respect. References Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc. The Dhammapada: The Buddha’s Path of Wisdom. Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society. 2000 Hochswender, W. , Martin, G. & Morino, T. The Buddha in Your Mirror. Santa Monica, CA: Middleway Press. 2001. New American Bible. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. : Washington, DC. 2001.

Dispute over Minimun Wage - 1281 Words

Introduction Suppose a person classified as an adult working in a fulltime occupation, cannot afford to eat, afford to find a place to reside and can barely clothe themselves. Then I suppose the government of our age has broken their social contract. Minimum wage is a disputatious issue because it is contested in an array and discriminatory audience. Minimum wage I believe is the epicenter of the economist’s sphere of interest as he in constantly in hot pursuit in finding its relationship with job loss. President Bill Clinton’s administration proposed in 1993 that it had intentions to have an increase in the minimum wage in America. The liberals applauded the step in good faith whilst their conservative counterparts expressed grief emotion†¦show more content†¦In this regard the employers would want to adjust their new business ventures so that employers are worth at least as much as the new minimum wage rate. This notion holds that these changes would cut low-skilled employees and replace them with mechanized skilled employment, hence many believe the minimum wage leads to unemployment. (Card and Kruger 55-57, 1995). Another more recent model is that of the monopsony. The tenets of this economic model is that the firm operates with continuous vacancies. Each firm would want to employ more employees at the current (initial) wage rate, however they find it is not worth it to give a higher wage because the firm would be forced to increase the wages of all their existing employees as well. The existing employees would not be happy if new employees earn a higher wage rate than their initial wage rate. In this predicament, small adjustments (increases) in the minimum wage will lead employers to increase employment due to that higher minimum wages enables previously low average firms in the same industries to fill vacancies quickly. If however the minimum wage is raised to many firms, they will opt to reduce employment which agrees with the conventional model (Card and Krueger, 102-110,