• Zara sources fabric, other inputs, and finished products from external suppliers with the help of purchasing offices in Barcelona and Hong Kong, as well as the sourcing personnel at headquarters.
• About one-half of the fabric purchased is “gray” (undyed) to facilitate in-season updating with maximum flexibility. Much of this volume is funnelled through Comditel, a 100%-owned subsidiary of Inditex that deals with more than 200 external suppliers of fabric and other raw materials.
• Comditel manages the dyeing, patterning, and finishing of gray fabric for all of Inditex’s chains, not just Zara, and supplied finished fabric to external as well as in-house manufacturers. This process, reminiscent of Benetton’s, meant that it took only one week to finish fabric.
• Further down the value chain, about 40% of finished garments are manufactured internally, and of the remainder, approximately two-thirds of the items are sourced from Europe and North Africa and one-third from Asia.