ZARA - M&S Comparison Case Study from LinkedIn

PROF. HIMANSHU KOTHARI

Theory of Constraints Consultant : Founder : Syncore Group. Prof for TOC & Market Excellence at JBIMS-NMIMS-SPJAIN-NiTiE

Ian and David
sincere thanx for the ref to ZARA case study - just fantastic - how likes of M&S is messing up and likes of ZARA are trailblazers in CASH and PROFITABILITY :

- but the fact is just NOBODY is learning from ZARA and TOYOTA
- most of the organizations live in COST WORLD - that's why !!!
- Many of the "COST" decisions and procurement and operational KRA's are decided by CEO in consultation with CFO
-CEO and CFO are mainly driven by Quarterly results
- so focus is on COST rather then FLOW !!!
- How many CEOs and CFOs understand FLOW ???
- But they are champions of COST CUTTING - shooting in foot and in head !!!
- they appoint consultants for COST CUTTING
-and consultants give crazy reports of cutting costs to improve profitability
- in one of the company - consultant gave report on RATIO OF SALES and PROFITS PER EMPLOYEE !!!
- this company threw out many good people to IMPROVE SALES and PROFIT PER EMPLOYEE RATIO !!!
- As a result - many many good people- REAL ASSETS - resigned and the client is left with deadwood kind of people - just COST to company and not at all ASSET to company !!!
- these guidelines and actions further slow down FLOW !!!
- This slowdown in FLOW further leads CEO and CFO for further COST CUTS
- this further slows down the FLOW
- what a a vicious cycle !!!

It is FLOW which brings in CASH and PROFITS FASTER - cost savings lead to slowdown and elongation of Cash to Cash cycle time and ability to generate cash profits !!!

Thanx again for ZARA and TOYOTA case ref.

One good thing about such CEO and CFO : that's why we are all in TOC consulting !!!

Long live Dr Eli and his followers too !!!

Prof Himanhu Kothari

Good Procurement is not about Savings

Should reducing spend as much as possible be the main purpose of procurement?

This short case analyses two globally-known retailers between 2002-2012.  The one who focused on minimising unit prices had a hard time, with profits flat over 10 years – even though in 2002 it had three times more sales than its competitor (red line).  By 2012 David had overtaken Goliath.  They now sold 30% more, and their 2012 profit was almost the size of their sales in 2002 – a 700% increase (blue line).

And it didn’t do this by cutting its supply costs.

Whilst cost has a key role in business, and good businesses pay as little as they need to for what they need, that by itself is not enough.  Your supply base needs to help you achieve your objectives, and I don’t know any organisation whose overarching goal is to reduce spend.  If it was, close down, spend minimised!

Back to the case.  The two companies I studied were the UK retail bellwether Marks & Spencer (M&S) who in 2002 had sales of £8 billion making a profit of £500 million.  The rival is Spain’s Inditex – best known for the brand Zara.  In 2002 it had sales of £2.5 billion and made £300 million in profit.  By 2012 M&S achieved £10 billion of sales, with an average profit of £550 million across the decade.  Inditex/Zara’s sales were now £13 billion and had averaged £1 billion in profits each year over the decade.  In the graph M&S’s profit is the red line, Inditex’s the blue dotted line.

Blinkered Procurement

If you purely focus on functional savings or PPV, and want the lowest price per garment, you might consider sourcing tactics such as:

·         Buying from countries where labour costs are low such as in the Far East

·         Buying in bulk to obtain volume discounts

·         Buying from a smaller number of larger suppliers to further consolidate volumes and simplify supplier management

·         Shipping by sea

By the early 2000′s M&S had done just this – moving its suppliers from mainly the UK to Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Asia in search of lower unit prices.

Although this is tempting logic, how come Zara – who’s clothes are not expensive – managed to grow and make higher profits, with what seems such a high cost base?  During the period studied

·         It is reported that half of Zara’s suppliers were Spanish, another 25% European, and only 25% from elsewhere in the world

·         Zara orders small quantities regularly at short notice, rather than bulk orders in advance

·         Zara replenishes store stocks frequently – usually twice a week.  Order Monday, delivery comes Wed/Thurs.

·         Zara uses air freight for getting garments to stores.  The world is served from a single Spanish distribution centre

·         In a typical year it introduces some 11,000 products, whereas a typical competitor might introduce 3,000.  Traditional logic says “smaller production run = higher costs”

So how has it managed to grow sales and profits every year for 20 years, and to deliver a return on assets of over twice the industry norm….when it didn’t focus on minimising the purchase cost of everything?

The retailer’s dilemma

Tradition fashion follows a well trodden path. Design – Buy/Manufacture to Forecast – Deliver – Sell during Season – Discount Sales of un-sold items.  Design might take place 12-15 months before the season, in order to allow the required volumes to be purchased at the best prices.  Buying a season’s quantity at a time helps reduce unit-prices and transportation costs to a minimum.

But once garments hit the shop floor things do not always go to plan.  Customers love some items…and they sell out within a few weeks.  Lost opportunity.  However others did not seem to sell at all, leading to the rise of the Outlet Mall and end-of-season sales.  Which in turn made things worse – “I like that, I’ll come back when the sales are on”…or “I’ll pick it up in the Outlet Mall in 6 months”.  What to do?  Get better at predicting the future?….

A dilemma:  Keep high stock to ensure you get every sale possible…whilst at the same time keep as little stock as possible so you have fewer unsold items and so you can carry a wider range (assuming you have limited space & cash)

Fast Fashion

Zara broke that dilemma with a different approach, which its founder Amancio Ortega called “Fast Fashion“.  If you speed up the supply chain, the need to forecast almost disappears.  With Zara it takes around 4-5 weeks from first design to a garment in the store.  A minor modification or making more of a popular garment is less than 2 weeks from factory to store.

Fast Fashion brings many benefits which help grow the top line and increase the profit.  It does reduce cost, not at a detailed unit-price level but at a more strategic level.

·         Distribution is highly automated and “low cost”.  Spanish garment manufacturers are small and flexible, but their labour rates are 6-16 times higher than the Far East

·         European road distribution is as cost effective as sea freight from China.

·         Stores are less crowded.  They don’t need stock rooms, and they don’t need large quantities of popular sizes because sales can be replenished within a week.  This gives a more “up market” feel to the store.  So freight costs are higher, but store cost/m2 of sales area is lower, as is store cost/annual sales.

·         Having less stock means they can carry a larger range of designs – increasing the chance there is something that appeals to a customer

·         Styles can change much more frequently – no longer limited to four seasons a year (Zara customers are reported to visit some 17 times a year compared to 3 on average)

·         There is less unsold stock to sell off.  It is reported Zara sales are 30% of the size of their competitors, and their discounts are less.

·         Their working capital is lower, stock turns are higher – with the same amount of investment in stock they can have more choices for customers

Save by spending more

I would be surprised if the price Zara pays for a shirt is lower than M&S, and very surprised if the freight cost per item is not higher.  It is easy to imagine a keen but naïve buyer suggesting that Inditex should buy in bulk, ship full containers by sea, and have fewer products, so that it could reduce its costs.  And I’m sure if it did this then there would be a noticeable increase in profit in the short term.  But this would be the wrong thing to do.  Very soon sales would fall too.  Inventories would rise tying up money and leading to heavily discounted sales.  Profits would plummet, CEO’s would get sacked, and a great company destroyed.

I’m sure Inditex doesn’t pay more than it needs to for its locally-produced garments, or for its air freight, and gets a great deal when building its offices and warehouses.  However I don’t believe it spend much time considering moving back to designing a year ahead of sales and ordering all its stock 6 months before the sales season, just to lower its unit item price.

Fast Fashion doesn’t just rely on traditional suppliers.  It needs suppliers who are flexible and adaptable and can produce small batches quickly and cost-effectively.  This is quite possible, but not if the manufacturer has a traditional (large order well in advance) mindset.  I would be surprised if Zara, like Toyota, has not helped their suppliers to improve during its journey – there is no way they could have grown if manufacturers had said “Sorry, 4 months lead time is the best we can do”.

The bottom line

·         Procurement should be all about aligning your supply base to your organisation’s objectives.

·         If you don’t know how your business makes money, or your public-sector employer delivers service, then how do you know what a good supplier and a good deal looks like?

·         If you only focus on paying the least amount for the service/goods specified, then don’t complain about “procurement not being respected in this business”

·         If you cant find the suppliers you need today, develop them tomorrow.  You wont become a great business just by buying what suppliers happen to offer to the market – no matter how low a price you can get!

·         Save on advertising by being good, not by squeezing marketing agencies rates.  Zara doesn’t need to spend much on advertising, maybe because it spends more on air freight and local manufacturers….Now how do you put that into a savings report and get it past the CFO?

Footnotes:

·         I cant claim that purchasing alone is responsible for this difference, but I think it is a great illustrative case of how great companies have better supply chains – not just the cheapest suppliers.

·         More recently Zara has gone a step further with many ranges.  They don’t even replenish fast movers – once its sold its gone.  This creates a customer buzz and pressure to buy now.  It still relies on it being able to make very short production runs very quickly at good margin, replacing fast-movers with a new range rather than restocking

·         It is reported Zara can get garments made popular by celebrities into stores within weeks – their fast supply chain means the cost of failure is low, junior designers can easily try ideas and there is no need for time-consuming senior-level committees and approvals.  Madonna wears a great top on tour – you can buy something similar in 5 weeks.   The Economist reported, “When Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe and Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano announced their engagement in 2003, the bride-to-be wore a stylish white trouser suit—which raised some eyebrows among those concerned with royal protocol. But within a few weeks, hundreds of European women were wearing similar outfits”—designed, made, distributed, and sold by Zara.

·         In March 2013 Forbes magazine reported Amancio Ortega, Inditex’s founder is now the world’s third richest person, just ahead of Warren Buffet.  His ex-wife Rosalia Mera, who recently died,  was reportedly the world’s richest self-made woman.

·         I went into a large city-centre M&S store last Christmas when I was in the UK.  The high piles of goods just looked depressing – they must have had the whole season’s forecast sales out on the floor.  All that effort (and cost?) to design great looking packaging undone by poor point-of-sales display.  It looked like a pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap store.  I suspected someone thought it would be better, and costs would be lower, to have a single delivery and order in bulk.  I didn’t spend much – I just wanted to get out.  I’ve checked other stores too – they all seem the same.

·         As a Brit I love the idea of M&S, and wish them every success.  If you read this and know someone who works there, please send them a link to this article, or suggest they buy a copy of Eli Goldratt’s book “Isnt In Obvious“, which will show them how to run a fast retail or distribution supply chain – better than just copying Zara without understanding the fundamentals.