Fashion brand Zara is preparing to establish a retail website in Israel, sources inform "Globes." The move is in the initial stages, in which the brand's global solutions are considered for their applicability in Israel. Zara has an international website that offers online shopping, but it does not have an option for deliveries to Israel. The website is global, and responds according to the country from which the surfer enters the website, so when the system detects a surfer from Israel, it will offer no option for adding goods to a shopping basket. An Israeli consumer can learn about the company's collection from the international website and search for items, but there is no Hebrew on the website or any practical possibility of using it.
Zara does not have a single collection that is uniform in every market. The collection for each country is selected by the local franchise holder, and the chances of finding exactly the same collection in different countries are zero. For the Israeli consumer, this means that not only having to go to a branch to buy an item, but also being confined to the collections marketed in Israel.
Zara has a franchise holder in Israel, Gottex Brands, which obtained the marketing franchise from Spanish company Inditex. Competition for the brand in Israel comes from international brands such as Mango, whose ecommerce methods are not much different from those of Zara, and also from Israeli brands, such as Castro Model Ltd. (TASE: CAST) and Renuar, both of which are very active in e-commerce. To this, of course, should be added competition posed by international brands and chains from overseas that do send packages to Israel.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on August 21, 2017
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