Zara, which includes the Zara Home segment, had the highest net sales of the Inditex Group worldwide in 2024, amounting to nearly 28 billion euros. The clothing retailer Bershka recorded the second highest net sales figure in the group. Inditex announced the closing of all Uterqüe physical stores in 2021, but the brand was integrated into Massimo Dutti. Inditex is one of the largest apparel companies These sales earn Inditex a place among the leading apparel and accessories companies worldwide. LVMH came top of the ranking in 2023/24 by a considerable distance, with sales worth well over 90 billion U.S. dollars. This was close to 40 billion dollars higher than second-placed Nike. Inditex came fourth in the ranking, behind discount retailer TJX Companies and ahead of sportswear giant Nike. Bershka Whilst generating significantly lower revenues than Zara, Bershka has consistently been the second most lucrative brand in the Inditex Group. Lesser known than Zara, Bershka still has a strong presence in high street fashion with over 850 stores worldwide. Bershka was also widely discussed among British Gen Z on social media, with almost one in five consumers having noticed the brand online.

Inditex Group, one of the world’s biggest fashion retailers, generated around **** billion euros in sales in 2024. The group's sales have increased consistently over the time period recorded with the exception of the years impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The fiscal year end of the company is January 31, 2025. Leading Inditex Brands Inditex Group operated seven different brands in 2024: Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, and Zara Home. The largest of these brands is Zara, which captured a share of over ** percent of the overall group sales. Bershka was the second largest Inditex brand, contributing about ***** percent of total group sales. Zara Zara is a fast fashion retailer which operates over ***** retail locations worldwide; with approximately ***** stores located in Europe. Though most commonly known for selling stylish and modern women’s clothing for reasonable prices, Zara also carries a wide range of menswear and children’s clothing. Between 2016 and 2022, Zara’s global brand value increased from about ** billion U.S. dollars to ** billion U.S. dollars, although it peaked in 2019 at **** billion dollars.

In Portugal, the fashion retailer Inditex presented ********** euros in earnings before taxes (EBT) as of 2019. This was the highest figure over the considered period, with 2020 presenting only *********** euros in EBT. After the COVID-19 pandemic, EBT values rose to ********** euros, as of 2021. In 2022, there was a decrease to ********** euros, but increased again in 2023 and 2024, namely to ********** euros.

In Portugal, the fashion retailer Inditex had 16 million euros as income tax expense in 2019. As of 2022, this figure had dropped to 12 million euros, but it increased to the all-time highest value of 24 million euros in 2024.

Inditex Group's online sales reached ** billion euros for the first time in 2025. Since 2018, online sales for the parent company of Zara and other brands have grown annually and at a rapid pace.

The ranking of the most sustainable cotton usage European retailer is led by H&M Group, with a score of 77.4. Scores are based on the retailer’s policy, uptake and traceability performance in relation to cotton usage. A score above 50 places retailers in the “leading way” class, a score between 25 and 50 is “well on the way” and a score below 25 is classified as “starting the journey” to sustainable cotton usage.

Sustainable Cotton and Fast Fashion In the assessment, the Spanish fast-fashion company INDITEX S.A., which is famous for its retailer Zara, received the lowest sustainable cotton score of 15.9. This low score is in stark contrast to its high revenue, which ranked as the leading fast-fashion company in Europe in 2018. In addition, INDITEX has also been ranked as the leading carbon emissions retailer in Europe.

Attitudes Towards Sustainable Consumption
Supportive attitudes towards sustainable fashion seem to be correlated to age of consumers. In other words, the younger the cohort, the more supportive they tend to be of sustainable fashion. 49 percent of consumers in the 18 to 24 age range report being “very supportive” of sustainability in the fashion industry, compared to 25 percent of consumers in the 55 plus age range. However, many consumers are unaware of the sustainability of fashion brands’ supply chains. Only 15 percent of consumers associated H&M with having a sustainable supply chain. This suggests that apparel retailers should perhaps be more transparent with their sustainability practices to improve their brand image in the eyes of consumers.

Based on the revenue figures from the company's financial year 2018, Spain-based retailer Zara (Inditex) ranked as the leading fast-fashion company in Europe. In that year, Zara generated around ** billion British pounds, surpassing the annual revenues of British retailers Marks & Spencer and Primark combined. Fast fashion’s product suppliers The fashion industry’s big names such as Zara and H&M are known for driving overproduction of apparel, which is predominantly outsourced through supplier factories in developing countries. H&M’s two main suppliers are located in China and Bangladesh, for instance. While the former also happens to be where most of the Inditex Group’s products are manufactured, the Spanish fashion retailer also has suppliers around European countries, such as Portugal and Spain. Europe’s textile waste problem Fast fashion companies often receive criticism for a string of reasons, the main ones revolving around environmental and ethical issues. Besides concerns around materials used in the production of clothes, unsold apparel that may end up sitting in companies’ inventories and clothing products that actually reach consumers but end up getting discarded create immediate problems. Recent studies looking into discarded textile items demonstrated that in Europe total textile waste produced per person was as high as nearly ** kilograms, most of which went to landfills to complicate the matter even further.

Sales revenue of Zara in Spain fell to under *** billion euros in 2021. However, the clothing brand's sales recovered and reached their maximum in 2023, with sales exceeding *** billion euros. Zara is the leading brand of the Spanish multinational Inditex, in Spain as well as worldwide. Moreover, Zara is also one of the main companies of the fashion industry in Spain, along with other brands of the same company or national clothing enterprises such as Mango or Cortefiel. Key international markets for Zara Zara was not only successful in Spain, but the brand was also making strides in key international markets in 2023. For example, Zara was generating buzz in the United States and had high rates of brand awareness in the United Kingdom and Germany that same year. A worldwide leader In 2024, Zara was the third leading mass market fashion brand worldwide. Measured by media impact value, Zara outshined competitors like Uniqlo and H&M. On the international stage, Zara also consistently outperforms Mango, the other leading mass market fashion brand from Spain.

Inditex had the highest sales among the selected major apparel retailers and manufacturers, with revenues of approximately 40.2 billion U.S. dollars in fiscal year 2024. Hennes and Mauritz (H&M), and Fast Retailing were ranked second and third, respectively. Leading apparel retail brands Louis Vuitton was recognized as the most valuable apparel brand in 2024, however, the company primarily designs, manufactures and deals with athletic apparel, footwear and sporting goods. On the other hand, Inditex, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), and Ralph Lauren are retailers, who operate in the conventional apparel market. These companies cater to the apparel needs of men, women, children and in some cases infants. Inditex as a global brand Inditex owns many recognizable fashion apparel brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull and Bear, and Stradivarius—its most recognised brand being Zara. Inditex utilizes the fast fashion business model. Fast fashion companies manufacture have their garments prototyped in a very short amount of time. As a result, clothing items go from design to store shelves very quickly. Some retailers can manage this process in as little as 15 days. This also means they can market more collections throughout the year. Inditex has an impressive global reach. The company has more stores than its main competitors, H&M and Fast Retailing.

No other day in the year represents the set phrase “shopping spree” better than Black Friday. Originated in the United States, the popularity of the Friday after Thanksgiving Day has skyrocketed in the world over the past years, and Spain is no exception to this global trend. According to the latest surveys, about 65 percent of the Spaniards that were intending to take part in this shopping event in 2024 were interested in buying fashion products. In the fashion industry, Inditex was by far the largest fashion company by revenue in Spain in 2023. Black Friday in Europe With only a few exceptions, the participation rate on Black Friday only increased across Europe between 2017 and 2018, with Romania topping the list with about 71 percent of consumers that took part in 2018. Ukraine is, in contrast, the European country that least participated in this shopping event at slightly over 30 percent of consumers, although this figure represents quite a leap from a shy 18.6 percent registered the previous year. In terms of discount rates, the list is led by the United Kingdom, with an average discount rate of 63 percent off all products for sale in 2018. That same year, Spain featured an average discount rate of 47 percent. The importance of Black Friday in the fashion industry Black Friday has become an extremely important event for the world’s leading retailers. In Spain, for instance, the sales of fashion and luxury items on Black Friday is over 400 percent higher than any other day of the year, representing one of the highest percentage changes across Europe. Generally speaking, the fashion industry has experienced a gradual increase in the number of online shoppers over the last few years, reaching 13.5 million online shoppers in 2022 as opposed to only 5.5 million in 2014.

Zara, Spain’s flagship fashion retailer and part of the larger clothing company Inditex, is a well-known brand globally. The success of this globally-present store can be reflected in the number of social media users that follow its various accounts. In the financial year 2022, Zara had more than ** million followers on Instagram, as well as approximately *** million on Twitter and *** million on WeChat, widely used among Chinese users. Inditex and its brandsZara had roughly ***** shops worldwide, ranking it as the most common establishment of the Spanish clothing company Inditex. The brands Bershka and Stradivarius followed in second and third place respectively, each with over *** stores worldwide, meaning Zara had more stores than the other two brands combined. Spain: benchmark for world’s fast fashionInditex ranked as the world’s second largest apparel and accessories retailer in 2021, with over **** billion U.S. dollars' worth of retail sales. Unlike its sales revenues, the Spanish group saw a steady decrease in its number of stores worldwide, which in 2019 stood at nearly *** thousand, but had fallen to approximately *** thousand in 2022. Spain was the country that enjoyed the highest number of Inditex stores that year.

It was estimated in 2017, that the apparel market grew by approximately **** percent compared to the previous year. Further growth was forecast for the following years, with a peak growth rate of around *** percent expected in 2020. The United States and China have the largest apparel markets in the world in terms of revenue. Apparel & footwear market H&M is one of the largest and most recognizable apparel brands worldwide. In 2017, H&M held the third largest market share within the global apparel and footwear market, with a share of *** percent. The apparel and footwear market is quite a fragmented market due to its highly competitive and saturated nature, meaning that no one company holds a large portion of the whole market. The global apparel and footwear market had retail sales of around *** trillion U.S. dollars in 2017. Leading apparel companies Adidas was the third most valuable apparel brand in the world, valued at approximately ***billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Nike, ZARA, and H&M are some of the other most valuable apparel brands worldwide. When it comes to retail sales, the picture is slightly different as many of the biggest apparel brands design and manufacture clothing as opposed to focusing on the retail side of the industry. TJX Companies, Inditex, and H&M were the leading apparel retailers in the world in 2017. Inditex, whose brands include ZARA and Bershka, had sales of around **** billion U.S. dollars that year.