Zara opens flagship store in China's Nanjing with cafe and content creation studio

By Casey Hall

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Inditex-owned fast-fashion retailer Zara opened what it dubbed a new-style Asia flagship store in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing on Friday as part of its global push to cut underperforming shops and double down on larger retail formats.

The Spanish company has put in place more digital integration and spaces designed to encourage shoppers to spend more time in-store, with the new features to be trialled in China before it decides whether to expand them to other markets.

The need to revitalise Zara's retail network has been particularly apparent in China. Multinational brands targeting the country's middle-class consumers have been squeezed by a broader spending slowdown as well as increased competition from local brands with nimble domestic supply chains and strong digital presences.

At 2,500 sq m (26,909 sq ft) spanning two floors, the Zara store in Nanjing's central business district of Xinjiekou includes a salon for private shopping experiences, complete with a lounge area and personal change rooms.

It also has a "fit check" studio with multiple cameras and lighting settings where customers can shoot their own video content and download it directly to their phones. Both are available to book via popular social messaging app WeChat.

The downstairs area also features the first Zacaffe coffee shop concept outside of Spain.

It is not the first time Zara has experimented with new concepts in China before exporting them to other markets. Its popular series of livestreamed shopping shows on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, last year led the brand to experiment with similar livestreams in Europe and the U.S.

Inditex has been shrinking its store footprint globally over the past few years, seeking to optimise its selling space by focusing on flagship outlets in prime locations and ramping up online sales.

As recently as 2019 Inditex had 570 stores in China, its biggest physical footprint after Spain. That number had fallen to 132 as of January 31 this year.

(Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by Jamie Freed)