design and product development is a highly people intensive process
intensive
The heavy creative workload of 1000 new styles every month is managed by a design and development team of over 200 people
all based in Spain each person in effect producing around 60 styles in a year.
With new styles being developed and introduced frequently, each style would provide only around 200.000-300.000 of retail sales, a far lower figure than other retailers or brands, and certainly not "cost-efficient" in terms of design and product development costs. But obviously, this higher cost of product development is more than adequately compensated by higher realised margins.
In addition, the entire product development cycle begins from the market research. This combines information from visiting university campuses, discos and other venues to observe what young fashion leaders are wearing, from daily feedback from the stores, and from the sales reports. This has meant a significant
investment in information technology and communications infrastructure to keep streaming up-to-date trend information to the people making the product and business decisions.
At the leading edge of research are the sales associates and store managers in Zara stores, who zap orders on customized handhel computers over the Internet to Zara headquarters based on wshat they see selling. And not just orders, but ideas for cuts.