Zara opens new flagship in New York's Hudson Yards

By

Triana Alonso

Published
Mar 15, 2019

Inditex is rounding off the week in which it reported its annual financial results with a strategic opening for its Zara brand in the United States: the Galician multinational's flagship banner will be opening a store in Manhattan's newest neighborhood, Hudson Yards, on Friday, March 15. 

Occupying some 2,100 square meters spread over two floors, the flagship store, located at 20 Hudson Yards, will offer both the Spanish retail chain's men's and womenswear collections. The new establishment is a key strategic move for the brand, following on from the opening of Zara Haussman in Paris last December, and setting the label up in a privileged location at the heart of the largest real estate development seen by New York since the Rockefeller Center. 

Reflecting the aesthetic evolution seen in Zara's most recently opened stores, the Hudson Yards flagship is a bright, minimalist space featuring walls of glass, which prioritizes functionality and falls in line with the sustainability principles of the brand's eco-friendly stores. The new point of sale has also been conceived as an example of Zara's integrated store model, which breaks down the barriers between physical and online shopping thanks to technological innovations including an RFID (radio-frequency identification) system. 

Inditex made its first incursion into the US market with Zara in 1989, opening a debut location on Lexington Avenue, New York. Zara currently operates in North America through an e-commerce platform and more than 100 stores in a score of cities that include Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Houston and Chicago. 

In 2018, Inditex saw its net profit rise 2% to 3.44 billion euros, while the group's sales totaled a record-breaking 26.14 billion euros, up 3% from 2017. Zara and Zara Home, which reported joint results in line with Inditex's recent announcement that the latter is to be folded into the former, saw sales of 18.02 billion euros. Zara ended 2018 with a total of 1,881 stores worldwide.