Inditex, owner of Zara, enjoys a robust start to summer

Inditex, owner of Zara, announced that sales of its spring-summer collection gathered steam to jump 16% in May, 2023.

This arrives as Zara works to alleviate higher wage costs and keep customers onside while they endure a cost of living crisis.

For the first quarter that concluded in April 2023, Zara, the largest fast fashion company in the world, revealed a better-than-expected 54% rise in net income of 1.2 billion euros ($1.24 billion), crushing analysts' mean expectations of 980 million euros, according to a Refinitiv poll.

In line with the 13.5% increase seen in the first six weeks of the fiscal year 2023–24, online and in-store sales have increased 13% to 7.6 billion euros during the initial quarter of 2023.

According to the findings, Inditex, whose market value last week surpassed 100 billion euros ($107 billion), has maintained its competitiveness while raising prices and reducing cost pressures, including a 20% increase in the average wage for shop workers in its home market of Spain.

In order to increase gross store space by about 3% in 2023, the company said it intends to invest 1.6 billion euros.

In a statement, Zara said that they expected increased sales productivity in their stores going forward.

With its main rival H&M finding it difficult to compete for customers affected by the cost of living crisis, Inditex, that also owns Massimo and Dutti Pull&Bear, surpassed other retailers in 2022. The market will receive a new update from H&M on March-May sales on June 15.