ZARA opens in Hong Kong

Investors continue to show confidence in the long-term potential of Hong Kong's retail market, with leading Spanish fashion brand ZARA opening its first store in the city.

The Managing Director of ZARA Asia Ltd, Mr David Konn, said he was very confident about future business development in Hong Kong and had already employed four managers and 50 staff for his shop.

"We also found consumers here very sophisticated and receptive to fashion, which is one of the key considerations for leading brands like ZARA in deciding where to set up our business," Mr Konn said.

"We have more than 200 in-house designers producing over 20,000 new items every year in order to stay on top of the latest fashion trends. We renew our collections and ship new items for the Hong Kong store at least twice a week."

The new ZARA shop will officially open tomorrow (May 21). It occupies a space of 15,000 square feet at the International Finance Centre Mall. The company has 640 stores in 47 countries.

ZARA is part of Industria de Diseno Textil (Inditex), one of the world's largest fashion retail groups.

The Hong Kong store will also be the first ZARA store in Asia wholly owned and managed by Inditex. The group has a long history of sourcing in the region through its Hong Kong office, which it set up seven years ago.

The Associate Director-General of Investment Promotion at Invest Hong Kong, Mr Simon Galpin, said fashion retailers with high sales volume and ongoing re-stocking of products, like ZARA, count on a well-developed logistics structure to allow timely delivery of goods with highly controlled costs.

"The supply chain will also need to be flexible enough to adapt to any rapid change in industry trends. These are all the competitive advantages of Hong Kong, explaining why companies choose to set up their supply management base here for the region," he said.

Ends/Thursday, May 20, 2004