Zara and fast-fashion are hurting JCPenney and Sears
Shoppers await as Zara opens the doors to its Westfield Pitt Street Mall store on April 20, 2011 in Sydney, Australia.
The fast-fashion model made popular by Zara is impossible for corporations including JCPenney and Sears to keep up with.
Zara sources most of its apparel in Spain and can get out new designs quickly. Meanwhile, department stores are simply modifying other people's designs and sending them to low-cost Asian factories, writes Patrick Lamson-Hall at the Business Of Fashion.
By the time the clothing makes the racks at JCPenney or Sears, the fashions are stale.
"It's worked so far because they can offer the apparel at lower cost," Lamson-Hall writes. "But consumers are quickly losing interest."
Chinese labor costs are also going up, making the model financially unsustainable.
"These companies are getting squeezed on two sides: by rising costs and by consumers who have more options and are becoming more choosy," Lamson-Hall writes. "These trends will only accelerate as the sourcing mix shifts and e-commerce booms."
Zara's model has fundamentally changed the fashion industry, the New York Times reported last year.
Zara's strategy involves stocking very little and updating collections often. Instead of other brands that only update once a season, Zara restocks with new designs twice a week, Suzy Hansen wrote.
That strategy works two ways, according to Hansen. First, it encourages customers to come back to the store often. It also means that if the shopper wants to buy something, he or she feels that they have to purchase on the spot to guarantee it won't sell out.
Unfortunately, JCPenney and Sears don't have the infrastructure to keep up right now.
It's showing: both companies have been in a tailspin in recent years.
More from our partners, Business Insider:
Business Insider: 'Batman' just brought a bad guy to justice in the UK
Business Insider: Mark Zuckerberg is much poorer than he was last year
Business Insider: It's official: teens are bored with Facebook
Business Insider: Novartis CEO: the age of massive blockbuster drugs is over
Business Insider: Fashion designer Tory Burch makes the Forbes billionaire list
The story you just read is accessible and free to all because our listener community contributes to our nonprofit newsroom. We go deep to bring you the human-centered international reporting that you know you can trust. To do this work and to do it well, we rely on the support of our listeners. If you appreciate our coverage, if there has been a story that made you pause or a song that moved you, would you consider making a gift to sustain our work? All donations between now and June 30 will be matched 2:1, tripling your impact.