Inditex wants to compete with Shein

The last time Inditex made headlines was last autumn, when the Zara's parent company reported excellent business performance due to significant mark-up and price increases policies. Inditex has held the title of the world's richest fast-fashion company for years, but since platforms like Shein and Temu have gained popularity among consumers, there has been a need to differentiate the brands of the Spanish company from the competition. After raising prices, Inditex saw a 30% increase in its shares, and now it is preparing to counter the low-budget proposal of Shein and Temu with a new brand. Lefties was launched twenty years ago as a Zara outlet, but today it has become a standalone brand offering jeans, clothing, and accessories for less than 20 euros. It has 17 stores around the Middle East and South America and 25 in Spain. In Inditex's home country, from 2019 to 2023, Lefties customers increased from 3.5 to 5 million.

Inditex's decision to relaunch Lefties aligns with the changes that have been implemented in Zara's communication and productions. By raising retail prices and "elevating" the creative level of the brand's communication to try to approach a high-end aesthetic through collaborations with established photographers like Steven Meisel and Alasdair McLellan, Zara now caters to a different audience compared to Shein and Temu. The goal set by Inditex for Lefties seems to be to regain the millions of customers who now prefer to invest in cheaper fast-fashion brands. Being able to focus on delivery speed, a feature where Chinese competition in Europe struggles, at the moment Lefties has a quite fertile ground for growth: it leverages the same marketing practices as competitors and collaborates with micro-influencers on social media to post low-cost content, making affordable prices a central point of the brand's communication. The success of Lefties is already bearing fruit in Portugal, where last year more customers were recorded than Zara, in Romania and in Turkey, where it opened its first stores, and in the United Arab Emirates, where it operates through franchising partners, at a time when several Inditex-owned brands are closing numerous stores around the world. During 2023, Bershka and Pull&Bear closed 585 stores.