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ZARA 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Zara at 50: how the brand rose to the top – and what it’s doing to stay there

 

As fashion empire hits middle age, it’s cutting costs and closing stores, shifting to larger outlets and new products

 

Sarah Butler

Sat 5 Jul 2025 10.00 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/jul/05/zara-at-50-how-the-brand-rose-to-the-top-and-what-its-doing-to-stay-there

 

In Arteixo, northern Spain, workers are putting the final touches to a gigantic white box of a building, fixing windows and planting greenery in the new global headquarters of the fashion brand Zara, which turned 50 this year.

 

The site, complete with a private high street where the retailer will test out its latest store concepts, is not far from the small store on the corner of a nondescript street in the centre of nearby La Coruña where, in 1975, Amancio Ortega opened his first fashion store.

 

From those humble beginnings grew Inditex, a fashion empire that today boasts seven brands including Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull & Bear and Oysho. It has more than 5,500 stores in 98 countries and an online presence in 116 more – from the US and UK to Zimbabwe and Uzbekistan.

 

Zara, which has been worn by the Princess of Wales, Taylor Swift and, controversially, Melania Trump, was the first brand in the group and remains by far the biggest. It is budget friendly but not super cheap, drawing in shoppers with affordable tailoring and on-trend items, especially dresses – most famously the 2019 polka dot viral dress.

 

Ortega, who at 89 is still regularly seen at the head office chatting with staff, was a local clothing manufacturer who had worked his way up from being a delivery boy at a shirtmakers when he opened his first shop. He is now the 12th richest person in the world according to Forbes, with a net worth of about $120bn (£880m).

 

More than 160,000 people work for the company he founded, more than 5,000 of them at the Inditex HQ in Arteixo, a complex which includes the new, soon to be opened Zara head office. Together they helped ring up sales of €38.6bn (£33.3bn) last year and profits of €7.6bn.

 

As the Guardian was given rare access to the building’s gleaming white corridors, staff whizzed past on electric scooters or even bikes to navigate the vast site.

 

But as the company hits middle age, Inditex faces challenges. Sales growth slowed to 4.2% in the most recent quarter, a slowdown from 10.5% in the previous quarter.

 

Like many other retailers, the company is reducing its overall store estate – with a net 136 stores closed in the past year.

 

The slowdown comes only a few years after a changing of the guard at Inditex, when the founder’s daughter Marta Ortega Pérez stepped in as chair while former lawyer and banker Óscar García Maceiras became chief executive.

 

Local boy García Maceiras, who joined in 2021 from Spain’s Banco Santander, is seen as an outsider with quite a lot to prove.

 

When we meet in his spacious office, the conservatively dressed CEO, in tight-fitting blue suit and shirt, is bullish about the company with which he shares a 50th birthday year. “We remain very confident in our capability to keep on growing,” he says.

 

While store numbers are reducing globally, the amount of space devoted to Inditex fashions around the world will increase by 5% this year as it shifts to ever larger outlets.

 

In the UK, for example, next month Zara will reopen its doors at Manchester’s Trafford Centre with a store that is 40% bigger than before, while Pull & Bear is doubling the size of its outlet there. Meanwhile, Bershka will open its first store in Manchester.

 

Bershka is also opening a new store in Glasgow this summer while Stradivarius, another Inditex brand, is opening there and near Newcastle later this year. The group is also looking for a site for The Apartment, a new concept that combines premium Zara clothing and , in a store laid out like a stylish influencer’s home. Right now there are only three in the world – in La Coruña, Paris and Madrid.

 

The UK expansion comes despite retailers’ warnings that a rise in taxes might depress new store openings and hit jobs.

 

“We keep on considering the UK a very relevant and attractive market,” García Maceiras says.

 

Similarly in the US, Inditex’s second-biggest market, he says the company will flex its supply base, which includes factories in 50 countries, to deal with whatever tariffs the Trump administration settles on. Inditex doesn’t use factories in the US or Americas at present – but García Maceiras doesn’t rule it out for the future.

 

Part of the challenge for well-established fashion brands is the rise of online fast fashion specialists Shein and its fellow Chinese-founded digital behemoth Temu.

 

García Maceiras shrugs off such upstarts, saying Inditex is competing on style rather than low prices and that the fashion industry has so many players that success is not dependent on a single rival.

 

“This is a market so highly fragmented that your level of success could depend basically on your own capacity of spotting trends and executing those,” he says.

 

“The fashion sector is connected with the inspiration and aspiration, and that is something that requires permanent innovation and a permanent mindset of listening to customer needs and customer desires in order to spot trends.

 

“The idea for us going forward is to keep on innovating every day, to adapt with an enormous level of flexibility to what our customers are looking for.”

 

This is where Inditex thrives – with an almost unique model based on producing about half its stock in relatively small amounts and less than a month before it hits the shop floor. Even if something is incredibly successful, it will never be reproduced exactly again.

 

When the weather or the economic climate turns against them, most retailers must plough ahead with plans made more than six months in advance. At Inditex, every store receives a tailored assortment delivered twice a week. Local managers have considerable control over what flows into their stores – feeding back what is selling, and what customers are asking for.

 

Its new larger stores are, meanwhile, designed to house an ever broadening array of products and services. That includes more premium product to tempt in a broader range of shoppers.

 

The new stores are also given an upmarket feel, using material made from recycled ceramics that looks like marble, and split into departments to house sportswear, footwear and other growing categories.

 

Technology is also helping lower costs and aiming to improve service. In Manchester, shoppers will be able to return or pick up goods bought online with a scan of a barcode thanks to robot-operated systems, while a new gadget will automatically sort unwanted items from the changing rooms.

 

Many of the tills will automatically scan in basket loads of purchases with the use of smart radio-frequency tags.

 

The group is also trying out different kinds of services including cafes, now in a handful of stores in Spain, Japan, South Korea and China.

 

García Maceiras says constant change is the key to the business staying healthy into middle age. “This is a business in which you should take nothing for granted.”

Why 50,000 Iconic French Shirts, Intended for America, Sit in Storage

 

Why 50,000 Iconic French Shirts, Intended for America, Sit in Storage

 

Hit by President Trump’s tariffs, the Saint James clothing factory has put its inventory of striped shirts and sweaters intended for U.S. retailers in its warehouse in France.

 

By Liz Alderman

Photographs and Video by Violette Franchi

Liz Alderman, who writes about business and economics in Europe, reported from Saint-James, France.

July 3, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/business/trump-tariffs-st-james-fashion-france.html

 

As fabric spooled out of a bank of knitting machines in a flare of blue-and-white stripes, workers at the Saint James clothing factory in France’s Normandy region stacked them into piles and cut along patterns to make the company’s iconic Breton sailor’s shirt, worn by celebrities and adored by fans worldwide.

 

Luc Lesénécal, the company’s chief executive, surveyed an enormous workroom splashed with a rainbow of yarns. Seamstresses had recently put the finishing touches on 50,000 striped shirts and sweaters to fill orders for American stores like Nordstrom and J. Crew.

 

But his plans to ship for the fall retail season have been thwarted by President Trump’s up-and-down tariff threats. Instead of loading the merchandise into cargo planes, Mr. Lesénécal has parked his entire U.S. export in the company’s warehouse, where it will sit until Wednesday, the deadline Mr. Trump has set for Europe to come up with a deal or face tariffs of up to 50 percent.

 

“This is yo-yo politics we’ve been dealing with,” Mr. Lesénécal said, gesturing around a factory the size of three football fields, where 300 longtime employees turn out 1.5 million shirts, sweaters, scarves and coats a year. “If we don’t have visibility, we can’t move forward.”

 

He is not alone. European industry has been whipsawed since Mr. Trump announced a barrage of trade actions aimed at rewiring the global economy. America’s imposition of 10 percent tariffs on most goods from the European Union, and scattershot threats to push the rates to 20 or 50 percent, has led companies to freeze projects, seek exemptions and prepare to raise prices.

 

The European Commission, the trade bloc’s executive branch, is working to persuade Mr. Trump not to impose the harshest tariffs and is seeking a trade deal before the deadline. The bloc already faces 50 percent tariffs on its steel and aluminum, and 25 percent for cars and car parts.

 

“A trade war makes both sides of the Atlantic poorer and is just stupid,” the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, said at a recent meeting of E.U. negotiators in Brussels.

 

The zigzag tariff policy, labeled “strategic uncertainty” by the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has confounded European executives. As president of a French trade group representing businesses with a “Made in France” label, Mr. Lesénécal now spends twice as much time as he used to dealing with tariff issues.

 

When Mr. Trump first announced that he would add an extra 20 percent tariff to goods from the European Union on April 2, Mr. Lesénécal was bewildered.

 

The base tariff on the classic Saint James sailor shirt, which costs $139, was 16.5 percent. “Our tariff jumped to 36.5 percent,” he said. “One week later it went back down, but it was still 10 percent more than what we’d been paying.”

 

For now, he is absorbing the additional 10 percent to avoid alienating the 150 American retailers that sell his clothing. He can do that because Saint James is an employee-held business, without shareholder pressure.

 

But the prospect of higher tariffs looms, he said. The United States accounts for less than 10 percent of Saint James’s exports, but the higher duty would be a barrier to the U.S. market, where it has been present for 30 years.

 

“We don’t want to leave the United States,” Mr. Lesénécal said, citing a loyal clientele from Miami to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. “Our clothing is an icon of ‘Made in France,’ and Americans want the ‘art de vivre’ that it represents.”

 

Few items are as French as the striped sailor shirts and sweaters that are made in the Saint James factory, which sits in the shadow of the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey near the English Channel and traces its roots back more than 130 years. Craftsmen originally spun local wool into yarn to make fishermen’s undergarments so tightly woven that neither water nor wind could penetrate.

 

In the 1950s, they evolved into rugged sailor sweaters and peacoats made for the French Army. Saint James veered toward the public in the 1970s, emblazoning its tops with a blue-and-white striped pattern, originally used by Napoleon III to spot sailors who fell into the sea. The motif, copied by other retailers, became a cult fashion item after Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso wore striped shirts everywhere. A billboard hangs on the factory floor showing Brad Pitt and George Clooney riding a motorcycle in Saint James stripes.

 

As a French heritage brand, the company could not open a factory in the United States without losing its cachet. “That would be like trying to harvest a Bordeaux wine in California,” Mr. Lesénécal said. “It would lose its essence.”

 

Recently, he and his U.S. manager, Benjamin Auzimour, crafted a letter to American clients, who place orders six months in advance. Should Europe’s deal with the United States result in a tariff higher than the 10 percent Mr. Trump recently added, the letter read, the excess would have to be borne by the retailer. “The risk is that some of them may say consumers won’t buy at higher prices,” Mr. Lesénécal said.

 

If U.S. clients balk, he might redirect the clothing in the warehouse to other countries, including Japan, where Saint James garments are popular — and there is no excess tariff.

 

A temporary loss of U.S. exports would not devastate the company, he said. But he has frozen plans to open two new U.S. stores. In addition to the risk of tariffs rising, he said, the U.S. dollar has weakened, raising his export costs.

 

“Maybe I’d rather open more stores in markets where there is greater economic security,” Mr. Lesénécal said.

 

The tariff tension has a particular resonance in Saint-James, a town whose identity has been entwined with America’s since the U.S.-led liberation of France in World War II. Among the neat stone houses, American flags flutter alongside those of Canada and Britain, which ousted German troops from Saint-James in July 1944. The Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial, with more than 4,000 white crosses commemorating fallen U.S. soldiers, is lovingly cared for by locals.

 

The Saint James factory itself sits atop a World War II airfield that belonged to the U.S. Army Air Force, marked with a warplane propeller and a plaque paying homage to the United States. So it was surprising, said the U.S. manager, Mr. Auzimour, to hear Mr. Trump claim that the European Union was created to “screw” the United States.

 

“No one here has forgotten what America did to secure Europe’s freedom,” he said, bowing his head at the American cemetery. “We remember why the European Union was really created: to prevent wars from happening again.”

 

Mr. Lesénécal is hoping that the trade war will end without major economic casualties. U.S. retailers have delayed putting in firm orders for the 2026 spring season until they have more certainty.

 

“I need to order wool and cotton thread from Australia and New Zealand,” Mr. Lesénécal said. “How can I do any of that when we don’t know what our business will be?”

 

“It’s a domino effect,” he added. “We need stability.”

 

Liz Alderman is the chief European business correspondent, writing about economic, social and policy developments around Europe.

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King Charles axes ‘embarrassing’ train over soaring costs

Royal train to be retired as King Charles seeks to modernise monarchy

 

Palace accounts show Treasury funding to remain at £86.3m, while duchy of Cornwall will waive some charity rents

 

Rachel Hall

Mon 30 Jun 2025 22.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/30/royal-train-to-be-retired-as-king-charles-seeks-to-modernise-monarchy

 

The royal family’s private “royal train” will be decommissioned as part of King Charles’s drive to modernise the monarchy and reduce costs.

 

The train has been used to transport members of the royal family around Britain’s railway network since 1840, but it has become increasingly costly to maintain and store. Rolling stock from the 1980s would need to be updated for modern railway networks, and two new more fuel-efficient helicopters offer a suitable alternative.

 

James Chalmers, the keeper of the privy purse, said: “The royal train, of course, has been part of national life for many decades, loved and cared for by all those involved. But in moving forward we must not be bound by the past.

 

“Just as so many parts of the royal household’s work have been modernised and adapted to reflect the world of today, so too the time has come to bid the fondest of farewells as we seek to be disciplined and forward in our allocation of funding.”

 

Chalmers said a search was under way for a long-term home for the train’s historic parts.

 

The annual royal accounts for 2024-25, published on Monday, show that the sovereign grant, which is distributed by the Treasury to fund the official duties of the royal family, will remain at £86.3m for a fourth consecutive year.

 

The grant will increase to £132m annually between 2025 and 2027. This is partly to take advantage of record offshore windfarm profits for the crown estate, which hit £1.1bn in the last financial year, and also to cover the remaining £100m costs for the final two years of Buckingham Palace’s £369m, 10-year refurbishment.

 

The accounts also show that royal travel costs increased by £500,000 to £4.7m and payroll costs were up £2m to £29.9m.

 

There was an increase in the number of travel journeys costing over £17,000, from 24 in 2023-24 to 43 in 2024-45, reaching a total expenditure of £2.7m. Travel costs for the king and queen’s state visit to Samoa cost £401,000 in public money.

 

As part of a sustainability drive, one of the royal Bentleys is now powered by biofuels, with the other due to transition this year, and a move to electric vehicles is under consideration.

 

Separate accounts also published on Monday reveal that the duchy of Cornwall, which provides Prince William with a private income of nearly £23m a year, will waive rents for grassroots groups such as wildlife trusts and the St Petrocs homelessness shelter, and reduce rent for local charities by 50%.

 

This follows a Channel 4 Dispatches and Sunday Times investigation last November into the prince’s duchy and the duchy of Lancaster estate, which found that the estates had secured rental agreements worth millions of pounds with the armed forces, the NHS and state schools.

 

Will Bax, the duchy of Cornwall’s new secretary and keeper of records, said the duchy was also looking at including schools in the community groups that would be eligible for the rent waiver. Commercial relationships with public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Justice will not change.

 

Bax said: “It would be remiss not to address the media scrutiny the duchy has experienced this past year. We’ve used these challenges as an opportunity to stop and reflect. Both the duke and I are clear that we want the duchy to be world-class in our approach to supporting people, communities and nature to flourish, and to realise that aim we must operate and communicate in a modern, socially minded way.

 

“It’s clear we’ve entered an era of deep change, but we change not because we disrespect our past but precisely because we do respect it.”

 

The accounts show the duchy generated profits of £22.9m, down £700,000 from £23.6m in the previous financial year.

 

The annual review for the Prince of Wales omits his income, expenditure and tax payments, a move away from the transparency implemented by Charles as the previous Prince of Wales.