From the New York Times.

“When we open a market, everyone asks, ‘How many stores will you open?’ ” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t know. It depends on the customer and how big the demand is. We must have the dialogue with the customers and learn from them. It’s not us saying you must have this. It’s you saying it.”

In New York, they did one page saying they were opening — in The New York Times,” Echevarría said. “But it’s not a campaign; it’s an announcement; it’s information. The company does not talk about itself. The idea was that the client was to talk about the company. It was not to say how good it could be. The customer would say that if it was deserved.”

while Spain has been suffering through real estate and debt crises (following the global financial crisis), Inditex has prospered. Echevarría said that is because the customer is always determining production — not the other way around. Every piece of clothing the company makes has, in a way, been requested. A business model that is so closely attuned to the customer does not share the cycle of a financial crisis.

“Actually, the customer is more or less the same in New York and Istanbul,” she said. “There are differences, like Brazilian girls like more brilliant colors, whereas in Paris they use more black. But in general when you find a fashion trend, it’s global.”

Inditex takes the fashion pulse of the world. A trend can last a half a year, but some are finished in a month.

Christian Louboutin took Inditex to court for selling the company’s signature red-soled shoes but lost, mainly because Inditex takes care to change its designs just enough to evade copyright laws.
Golsorkhi says. “I was of the same mind myself, but I have grown out of that because I realize that the fashion companies also copy each other. In the end, no one’s original.”

They have done process innovation very well,” says Nelson Fraiman, a professor at Columbia Business School who has studied the Inditex model. “Product innovation? No. But tell me one Chinese company that has done product innovation very well. They are brilliant at process. I think you should give a cheer for process innovation.”

He was talking about Zara (the store).