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When it comes to finding trendy and affordable clothing, Zara and H&M are two of the go-to retailers. From basics and fancy coats to dresses and shoes, Zara and H&M have a lengthy catalog of all kinds of products that don’t break the bank.
We researched the brands and looked through countless customer reviews to create this comprehensive Zara vs H&M overview. We’ll lay out the differences and similarities between these two fast fashion giants to help you decide where to shop next.
Zara is a Spanish company founded in 1975 that focuses on fast fashion. There are over 2,200 Zara stores across 88 countries. This retail company strives to develop and put out new products in just a couple of weeks’ time in order to keep up with fashion trends.
Zara’s core values are beauty, clarity, functionality, and sustainability. Its aesthetic is more edgy, chic, and professional.
H&M is a Swedish company founded in 1947 and is the second-largest clothing retailer after Zara. There are over 5,000 H&M stores across74 countries. Similar to Zara, H&M aims to offer quality fashion at an affordable price.
H&M caters to many different styles and is known for its basics.
H&M’s average price point is considerably lower than Zara’s because the products are more casual with simpler designs and (usually) slightly inferior quality.
For example, most dresses at H&M are less than $40, while most of Zara’s dresses can go for up to $70. H&M also offers a 20% student discount.
Reviews for both retailers have said that the sizing is either inconsistent or runs small. Zara offers XXS-XXL products and an occasional XXXL size, but the size range varies for each individual piece of clothing.
The website provides a size guide that features an easy-to-follow diagram that shows where to take body measurements and the numbers that correspond with each size.
Zara is popular because people love that the products are fairly high quality at a lower price than luxury brands.
People are able to achieve those trendy and professional looks with pieces from Zara without completely breaking the bank.Zara quality is slightly higher than H&M, which is reflected in the price.
Customers often buy products from Zara as staple pieces to incorporate into their wardrobe for many looks that can last a long time.
H&M is generally regarded as having lower quality products than Zara which is because of the price difference.
That said, there are some types of garments that consumers prefer from H&M over Zara.
For example, people rave about the quality of H&M’s outerwear. Many also prefer the quality and fit of H&M jeans over jeans from Zara.
Aside from this, many customers have said that the more casual items are not as durable and feel cheaper than Zara, which is to be expected for the cheaper price.
To provide more insight, we have searched through the internet and compiled a few main points regarding the experience of buying at Zara vs H&M. Here’s what customers have to say:
Zara has slightly better quality than H&M
Both brands offer trendy and fashion-forward clothes
Zara tends to be more professional, while H&M is more casual
H&M has a large selection and variety of clothes
H&M tends to offer better outerwear and jeans
Both brands typically run small for sizing
H&M offers a wide selection of plus-size clothing, whereas Zara only goes up to XXL and doesn’t even have many options in their largest size (especially when shopping in stores)
In Conclusion
In the end, the better brand is entirely dependent on what is best for you. Both Zara and H&M have pros and cons that need to be weighed.
Zara is better for those who have a little more to spend on longer-lasting, more sophisticated clothes. However, H&M carries more affordable products with more inclusive sizes and a larger selection of styles.
Since a lot of malls will have both of these stores, we recommend going to both to try on garments and get a feel for each of their clothing.
Either way, you are sure to find exactly what you’re looking for at a more reasonable price than luxury brands. Many people shop at both stores – you can’t go wrong with either!
H&M is the oldest, has the largest number of physical stores, and has expanded from its budget roots to include seven other brands. Zara is most prominent in its native Spain but has managed to expand globally, expanding its brand to include Zara Home.
Zara has traditionally taken a subtler approach to reductions, only discounting during key sales periods while H&M takes more frequent and aggressive markdowns.
Zara's success is based on its ability to adapt quickly. Unlike many clothing brands, whose designs are stagnant for the season, Zara is constantly assessing and reacting to the environment in a matter of weeks. The brand designs new styles and pushes them into stores while the trend is still at its peak.
Unlike H&M, whose maximum prices do not differ between premium and regular collections, ZARA has a higher maximum price for its premium collection. Within its regular collection, ZARA continuously keeps its prices higher than its Swedish competitor.
This rainy, windswept, city on the rugged Atlantic coast is the unlikely headquarters of Zara-owner Inditex (ITX.MC) - the world's biggest fast fashion retailer.
This is Inditex's higher-end label, and it's targeted at an older customer. Prices are higher than at Zara, and the focus here is less on staying on trend but rather on creating more classic, timeless styles. It has over 760 stores around the world.
Gap is an omnichannel retailer of clothing, accessories, and personal care products for men, women, and children. Fast Retailing is a retail holding company. Uniqlo is a casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer. Inditex is a company operating as a clothing and fashion retailer.
We calculated an average for each size from the bust, waist, and hip specifications to make a comparison of the other sizes and found that H&M's next size up, a 14, was marginally smaller than a size 12 at Asos and Zara. It was just slightly larger than a 12 at New Look.
Zara - excellent design, great quality but for the price i would say it's not quite worth it. What do you think of the fashion brand H&M? There's good and bad. Fast fashion brands like H&M and Zara allow poorer folk to stay up to date with trends without spending so much money.
What are some of Zara's weaknesses? Fast-Fashion: Interestingly, the trend that helped propel Zara to the top is the cause of its most pressing weakness. With the focus on sustainability increasing among customers and policymakers Zara's weakness is balancing sustainability with fast-fashion.
The store prides itself on getting new designs in stores within 2 weeks. Zara follows the principle of reducing the quantity manufactured for a particular style. By doing so, Zara not only reduces its exposure to any single product but also creates artificial scarcity. The principle is applied to all fashion items.
Zara's highly responsive, vertically integrated supply chain enables the export of garments 24 hours, 365 days of the year, resulting in the shipping of new products to stores twice a week. After products are designed, they take around 10 to 15 days to reach the stores.
Outsourcing: H&M is immensely dependent on outsourcing. Hence, this is one of its primary drawbacks. Instead of producing their goods in-house, they have more than 900 suppliers in Asia and Europe. They are responsible for manufacturing their products.
Interestingly enough, the country where shopping at Zara is more expensive than elsewhere is South Korea (96 percent more expensive than in Spain) followed by the USA (92 percent) and China (78 percent).
Ultimately, while Inditex and H&M are both fast-fashion retailers, “Zara has been coming back to having a pretty strong product in store,” Ramirez said.
Major players in the fast-fashion market include Zara, H&M Group, UNIQLO, GAP, Forever 21, Topshop, Esprit, Primark, Fashion Nova, and New Look. Many companies are both retailers and manufacturers, though they often outsource the actual production of clothing.
Zara and Shein are global fashion brands that offer affordable and trendy clothing for everyone. Shein clothing is less expensive than Zara clothing, but Zara clothing is usually of higher quality.
Every single piece of clothing passes through one of Zara's four distribution centers across Spain. We visited the largest of all, located in Zara's main headquarters in the small town of Arteixo, in the north of Spain. This area of the country is home to its founder, Amancio Ortega, and the first Zara store.
Zara is the Spanish clothing retailer Inditex Group's flagship brand. Of the numerous fashion companies that belong to Inditex, Zara has the highest store numbers on a global scale. As of January 2023, Spain, France and Italy were the European countries with the highest number of Zara stores as shown in this statistic.
How popular is Zara in the United States? In total, 11% of U.S. fashion store customers say they like Zara. However, in actuality, among the 46% of U.S. respondents who know Zara, 24% of people like the brand.
Zara is one of the biggest international fashion companies, and it belongs to Inditex, one of the world's largest distribution groups. The customer is at the heart of our unique business model, which includes design, production, distribution, and sales, through our extensive retail network.
Instead of manufacturing in-house, H&M outsources most of its production to over 900 independent suppliers in Europe and Asia. While this strategy has contributed to its success, it puts the company at the mercy of the suppliers.
H&M had a simple business concept. The brand produced quality fashion at the best price. There are clothing pieces for women, men, and children in the latest fashion trends and designs. The fast-fashion technique ensures daily shipments in over 60 different markets to the company stores.
Aimed at young, fashion-conscious urban consumers, their products are trendy and they're cheap, bordering on disposable. Fast fashion retailers make their profits by having a high merchandise turnover and by constantly resupplying the product pipeline with the latest trends.
Zara denim is both affordable and trendy, making the brand one of our go-to stops for new jeans. For reliable pieces you will wear time and time again, you can't go wrong.
Compared to Zara, H&M's sizes are either true to size, a little too small, or too big. It all depends on the clothing item you buy. Despite their affordable prices and fashion-forward pieces, shopping for the right size can feel like a hassle.
The founder of H&M Erling Persson passed most of the company down to his children. His son Stefan Persson and family own 50.5% of the total shares and 76% of the voting shares.
A disadvantage for the Zara's multi-brand story strategy is cannibalization, because when the brand images per store aren't clear for the customers there is a big risk of cannibalization. Another disadvantage is maintaining several brands as the costs are very high.
Any disruption in the supply chain causes delay and leads to customer dissatisfaction. Committing too much to fashion trends: Although Zara is known for its unique design and favoring new fashion trends, this can be its weakness. They pay too much attention to highly volatile trends.
The biggest disadvantage of Zara's supply chain is that since Zara owned all the channels of supply chain, it becomes difficult to expand to far location as it is very expensive to distribute such products.
The Zara target market includes women and men, mainly younger adults in the age range of 18 to 40. This places the Zara segmentation strategy as largely focusing on Millennials and Gen Z, who are both fashion conscious and tech savvy.
Zara's having trouble breaking into the U.S. because they don't participate in "vanity sizing," or labeling bigger clothes with a smaller size. Zara clothes are true to size, reports Amina Akhtar at Elle.
However, the brand has recently faced three main challenges: e-commerce, competition and sustainability. To sustain its global expansion, the brand made a step toward digital expansion even before the pandemic hit, and it paid off. So far in 2020, Zara reports a 74% jump in online sales alone.
H&M's business idea is to offer fashion and quality at the best price in a sustainable way. With a broad and varied product range, H&M makes it easy for anyone who is into fashion to express their own personal style.
Because Zara's items are priced based on market demand, not on manufacturing cost. Plus, 85% of its items are sold at full price compared to the fast fashion industry's year-long sales and discounts. With billions of dollars worth of annual profits, it was honored as the 41st Most Valuable Brand by Forbes in 2020.
H&M has become one of the leading fast fashion companies using its supply chain and techonology as core competitive advantages. Fashion for All. H&M's business model consists of creating value for customers by offering fashion and quality at the best price. H&M offers products for women, men, teenagers and children.
The H&M brand emphasizes offering their quality products cheaper as a means to keep customers trooping into their shops. They are known to offer huge discounts very often, unlike most of their competitors.
The retailer has been facing challenges for a while. In late September, CEO Helena Helmersson noted that a combination of its pullout from Russia, weak sales in several key markets, and rising raw material and freight costs were hurting its bottom line.
Gap Inc. is the largest specialty apparel company in the US that owns several billion-dollar lifestyle brands, including Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta. Like Zara, Gap offers clothing, accessories, and personal care products. Gap has over 150,000 employees with $13.8 billion in revenue.
Zara - Schimenti Construction Company. Zara, one of the world's leading fashion retailers, selected Schimenti Construction to build its new flagship store at 666 Fifth Avenue. Zara's largest US store, at approximately 39,000 square-feet, is located in a symbolic Manhattan building, the former NBA store.
Scoring even lower than H&M on the Rank a Brand sustainability scale, Zara received a 14/36 - also a C. Taking a look at the report, we see that Zara has implemented policies for the reduction of hazardous chemical use, but none that have to do with carbon emissions or the usage of sustainable raw materials.
H&M (an initialism for Hennes & Mauritz) is a multinational clothing company based in Sweden that focuses on fast-fashion clothing for men, women, teenagers, and children.
Reuse – garments that can be worn again will be sold as second-hand clothes. Repurpose – old clothes and textiles that cannot be resold will be turned into other products, such as cleaning cloths. Recycle – all other items are shredded into textile fibres and used to make, for example, insulation materials.
12-8. The most appealing case about fast fashion brands such as Zara and H&M is their short lead time. The time of designing the garment, manufacturing it and then packaging and shipping it is very fast and so they are able to reach to the customers …
The owners of Zara (Inditex) and H&M (H&M Group) are the world's two biggest players in fashion retail, and as such are under intense scrutiny as the market undergoes changes accelerated by the health crisis.
The success of the brand lies where customers appreciate and desire the brand, which is over and above product level benefits and strongly driven by the brand experience. Zara uses its store location and store displays as key elements of its marketing strategy.
The H&M business concept is to offer fashion and quality at the best prices with sustainability as an added value. We achieve this by buying directly from manufacturers and by having efficient logistics and our own warehouses, not by compromising on our sustainability requirements.
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