30+ Secrets Zara Uses to Give You a Desire to Buy Their Clothes

The minute that you walk into a Zara, there are already design choices made to draw you in. In fact, maybe you stopped in because you saw something cute at the front of the store.

That doesn’t mean it’s the best deal. As a matter of fact, Zara keeps their most expensive clothes close to the door. This means that the first thing that you see is likely the most costly. So, you’re likely to see something you want and buy it before getting to something more affordable.

This isn’t the only precise design feature in Zara’s stores. They control every aspect of the experience to ensure that customers are interested and make a purchase.

Still, practice makes perfect, even for a big business. That’s why they have test stores in their headquarters in Spain. While customers never go to these stores, it’s a great way to practice different design features. Once concepts like mannequin size and styles and check-out locations are perfected, it’s rolled out in real stores.

Even if you don’t shop at Zara, you probably can’t remember the last time you saw a commercial for them. You probably won’t see much advertising anytime soon either!

Zara only dedicates 0.3% of its profit to advertising. Even then, a lot of this advertising is in window signs rather than a television ad. This adds to the sense of luxury that Zara cultivates for itself. This advertising tactic creates the feeling that Zara doesn’t even need to advertise for its success.

Zara places a lot on appearances to draw customers in. We’ve already looked at plenty of concepts that Zara puts into practice to make sure that their stores maintain this image.

One Zara employee stated that there are even some more dubious unwritten rules to ensure this. They said that they recognized a pattern between how an employee’s look compared to the company’s image and how often employees were assigned to the stock room if they didn’t stack up.

If you want a handy tip from employees at Zara, the biggest one is to shop online. While shopping in the store has some benefits, shopping online has a lot of perks.

For one, you’ll find a wider range of products and sizes when you shop online. Even better, though, when you shop online, you know that you’re getting a brand new product. No one has tried it on before and it’s been quality-checked.

The teamwork of bringing a Zara store together doesn’t stop at the test stores, though. A lot of effort goes into maintaining each store to maximize profits.

This is helped along by professionals that Zara refers to as “visuals.” These designers come in and make sure that the store is set up perfectly each day. They’re also the ones who put outfits together to make sure that the displays are runway-ready and tempting to buy.

Just like any other store, when you walk into Zara you’ll probably see at least a few employees in uniform. At Zara, this is actually a distinction they make very clear.

If you work at Zara, you only have to wear the uniform for the first three months that you work there. Like any other store, a uniform can help make employees stand out. In this case, seeing the uniform is a clear distinction of who is still learning the ropes.

You don’t have to just accept it if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the store. This makes it much easier to ensure that customers leave the store having made a purchase.

While you’re at the store, if you see something that you want that’s available online but not in the store as you need it, talk to an employee. They can help you order directly from the warehouse. The item will usually arrive at the store for you to pick up the next day.

As we mentioned earlier, Zara is set up in a specialized way to ensure that customers are drawn in. This is hard to keep up with when the store gets busy, though.

There’s no way to keep up with a very busy store perfectly all the time, though. This means that if you want to make the most of a day with sales, make sure you check the tags. You might find that the shirt that was among the more expensive items was simply misplaced from the discounted stock.

If you’re looking at an outfit on a Zara shelf, it might not be the first store they’ve been in. Zara is great at making sure they make the most out of their garments.

First off, Zara ships clothes around to see where they’ll find success. A shirt that doesn’t sell in Europe might debut in another part of the world before leaving circulation. If it continues to fail, Zara will often rework the garment into something new and more successful.

Everyone wants to find a great deal when they shop. Sometimes, this means keeping an eye out for slightly damaged items that are sold at a discount but are still salvageable.

You can’t use this tactic to get a deal at Zara, though. If you purchase an item that’s damaged or stained, it’s sold for full price. However, they will mark the damage on your receipt. This will allow you to more easily return the damaged item if needed later on.

If you work at Zara, there isn’t much hope that you’ll sneak out a piece of merchandise either. They take that offense seriously and even have some measures in place to help out.

This includes, according to this employee, being checked at the door every day. Here, security makes sure that employees haven’t taken anything from the store home with them, either by mistake or on purpose. The employee described the experience as a bit of a pain but that it ultimately makes sense.

Once you buy a piece of clothing at Zara, you have no guarantees about its condition. Put another way, you don’t know what that garment has been through since it was put on the floor before customers came in.

Odds are, there’s a good chance that it’s been tried on throughout the day by a number of people. One employee shared that, by the end of the day, the clothes tend to garner issues like makeup stains. So, it’s best to give your clothes a quick wash to get them in top condition.

Shopping online has made a lot of things easier. Now, you can order clothes without even having to change out of your pajamas. However, it does come at a price.

In this case, a pretty literal one! When you order something online, you have to account for the extra fee of the cost of shipping. You can skip out on this entirely with Zara. All you need to do is order online and pick it up at a store instead of having it delivered directly.

When you’re shopping at Zara, you won’t want to make the mistake of ignoring the tags. Zara has a set of four different collections including their Basic, TRF, Woman, and Studio collections.

Basic clothes, as the name suggests, include your everyday essentials. TRF clothes are aimed at young adults who are perusing Zara. If you want high-quality, though, look toward Woman and Studio. Zara Woman has higher quality designs while Zara Studio is the clothes you can order special online but can’t buy at a physical location.

Another trick that Zara uses to make more sales is to create scarcity. If you see something you like, you have no guarantees that it’ll still be there next time you shop.

This works for a few reasons. For one, it gives customers new items to see and buy, even if they were to visit the store every day. Even if a jacket is only moved to another part of the store, making it harder to find and showcasing new things can go a long way in turning a profit.

Another result of the scarcity effect is putting customers in a certain mindset. In other words, when you see something you love, they want you to act on impulse.

If there is scarcity around the item, you might find yourself thinking about whether you want to turn down your one opportunity to buy it. This might mean that you make a purchase you otherwise wouldn’t for fear of missing out. Unfortunately, this usually ends in buyer’s remorse on your part.

When you go into a Zara store, you’ll notice that there aren’t many traditional departments. You won’t head over to one part of the store to buy pants and another to buy shirts.

This is purposeful. In the place of the traditional breakdowns, outfits are often hung together. This is to make it easier to visualize an entire outfit. So, you’re more likely to check out with the whole outfit rather than just a single article of clothing.

Of course, over the course of running a store, items will get damaged. Oftentimes, this means that the items have to be taken out of the rotation for sale because they no longer meet quality standards.

Yet, they don’t just get tossed in the trash at the end of the day. Instead, the employees set this clothing aside and a separate service comes through at the end of the day. At this point, they determine whether the items are able to be washed or repaired before sale.

One employee shared that keeping the game neat and tidy is a big part of their job. Furthermore, that often isn’t as easy as it seems it would be to control.

Yet, it’s important to remember that this is much harder when customers are constantly moving things and trying them on. They described the experience as putting a lot of effort into adjusting and readjusting clothes after customers have looked at them to make sure everything stays looking perfect.

We discussed how Zara uses the scarcity effect to sell clothes to customers. There is another aspect to this that you may not have considered.

For example, have you ever noticed how few copies of the same garment on the floor? This can make it really hard to find the size you’re looking for. Before giving up, ask an employee if they have garments in the size you need. Having a limited number on the floor makes the item look more scarce.

This doesn’t mean that Zara employees are later allowed to wear just anything. After all, Zara stakes a lot on their image in their marketing approach.

One employee shared that once you’ve been working at Zara for three months, you have the option to start wearing your own clothes again. Still, the outfits have to be approved by the store before they’re allowed. Employees usually have to stick to black attire as well.

We mentioned the term “fast fashion” already. However, it’s important to take a closer look at what that term means because it’s why Zara has such a high output.

Fast fashion is the practice of producing frequent releases in place of the traditional seasonal release. This way Zara can constantly provide new things for customers to buy and experiment with new looks. They frequently rework their designs to nail down what’s the most profitable. This is also how they keep up with luxury designs.

When you want to avoid the crowds, there’s more to it than just choosing the right time of day. You also have to choose the right store to go to when you head out.

It’s not surprising that the most populous Zara location is located in New York. More specifically, the store is located on 503 Broadway, at the store’s SoHo location. This is the location that earns them the most business and the most likely to lead to a busier crowd.

When you’re working to find the best deal at Zara, it’s good to know when to look out for sales. To make the most money, Zara does try to sell as many clothes at full price as possible.

This includes leading up to the release of a new collection, typically in January, February, July, August, and December. If you wait a few days longer than you might usually, the price will drop right with a sale as they try to move the remainder of the stock.

If you like to look at something brand new when you walk into a store, you’ll want to check out something brand new, you can at Zara. At least, that is if you know when to go.

The new merchandise arrives before the store opens on Mondays and Thursdays. Once these shipments arrive at the store, about a fourth go on the floor, and the rest are stored in the stockroom. Stores get smaller shipments of merchandise throughout the week as well.

For those that really love to save, there’s one deal that would save you a lot of money in the long run. The only catch is that you’d have to switch to a job at Zara.

While working at Zara, employees have the chance to take advantage of a 25% discount. This is a flat rate for everything too, including the items that are already discounted for sale in the store. This would definitely make shopping a little easier on the wallet.

While that 25% employee discount might seem like a sweet deal, it isn’t all of it. Employees get discounts at more than just Zara stores as well which sounds pretty handy!

Employees at Zara get an exclusive card during their time of employment. They can use this card to save at other companies under the company Inditex. This means that in addition to Zara and Zara Home, they can save at Stradivarius, Uterque, Pull & Bear, Oysho, Bershka, and Massimo Dutti.

To be fair, this isn’t a quick scheme to save on these stores. You can’t just expect to walk in and take advantage of a 25% discount on your very first day.

It isn’t a discount that’s been handed out to employees on their first shift. Instead, it’s given after an employee has worked at Zara for a while. This is an effective way to make sure that not just anyone takes advantage of the savings and prompts employees to shop at the store in their off-time.

As we’ve stayed before, one way that Zara draws customers in is with a pristine image. Employees work hard to ensure nothing is out of place in the store while customers browse.

This also includes the fact that they have to deal with customers coming in with food and drinks. When this happens, it’s up to the employees to protect the clothes but they have to do so discreetly as to not draw attention. It’s easier for them to maintain this when no one brings food in!

As we said earlier, it’s a good idea to check online for information about the items you want to buy to save the most. When looking, it’s a good idea to take down a reference number as well.

This is because this is the best way to find what you want in the store. If you try to describe a top with stripes to an employee at Zara, they might not quite understand exactly what you’re looking for. With a reference number, they can look it up right away.

Zara is meant to offer the ease of fast fashion without sacrificing a veneer of luxury. They actually partially accomplish this thanks to the unintentional help of luxury brands.

When you see a luxury item that a celebrity or public figure is wearing, you might notice something eerily similar on Zara shelves soon after. Naturally, there are some differences. Not just to account for changes in design but the Zara product is usually cheaper partly thanks to lower-quality materials.

If you want something specific when you go to Zara, it’s best to take the time to look online first. Otherwise, you might not see what you want in the store.

When you do this, do more than just check the in-store availability. This will let you know if you can go pick up or try on the item in person. In doing that, you can tell employees exactly what you’re looking for with no trouble.

At this point, we’ve given you some tips on where to go and when during the week to go for the best chances to find something at Zara. However, there is one more tip to pass on in this regard.

The time of day that you go to Zara also makes all the difference in how busy the shop will be. If you want to make sure you don’t have to wait in long lines, it’s best to stop by before noon. Once lunch hits, the stores tend to start to get very busy.

The location of a store means a lot to its success. After all, it needs to be somewhere accessible, easy to find and to match up with the goals of the brand.

For instance, Zara will never sit next to a store like a grocery store or a Walmart. Instead, you’re more likely to find one in a bustling mall or lining the streets with other stylish stores in major cities. This helps target their demographic and lend to their general image.