I went though the compatriots and ZARA and GAP, looked into their production lines, looking at these researches then i wrote The SWOT for GAP AND ZARA, I also finished off SMART and Action, Tactics and Control,  and finished off my sostac report.  below the the questions and my answers as well as the look at zara and gap

Specific; 

Define the goals
Who is involved?H&M and Natural History Museum  What do I want to accomplish?Raise money to the charity, increase publicity for the brand and the organisation.Where will it be done?At the Museum and H&M online store  Why am I doing this – reasons, purpose?Purpose to raise money to the Development of trust History Museum.Which constraints and or requirements do I have?

Measurable;

Can you track the progress and measure the outcome?
Sale Stock management Followers How much? 200K  for the charity
How many?Increase the follower for both brand and charity How will I know when my goal is accomplished?Through the numbers of sales, fund raise and followers.

Attainable/ Achievable

Is the goal reasonable enough to be accomplished?The goals are achievable within the camping, as the themes of the collection is always in trend with the young generation.Make sure the goals are not out or below standard performance?

Relevant;

Are the goals worthwhile and will it meet your needs?

The camping is worthwhile for the sales and publicity, as public always like donation to charities 
Is each goal consistent with the other goals you have established and fits with your immediate and long-term plans? yes it would 


Timely;

Your objective should include a time limit?Ex; I will complete this step by month/ day/ year.The campaign would have a minimum of six month

Zara

A Spanish company specializing in disposable chic fashions that are here today and gone

tomorrow. Located mostly in Europe, the firm’s stores answer to popular trends by telling

designers in Spain what customers are asking for locally.

• Grown-up Eurochic

• Two weeks turnaround

• Fewer stores

• Own production facilities

• medium profit %

A swot analysis must be developed for zara in diagram (reword, Not part of word count)

Here is the SWOT analysis of Zara.

Strengths in the SWOT analysis of Zara

Unique designs – One of the first and foremost advantages of Zara lies in its design abilities. It has a plethora of designers on board who understand the Zara brand and the psyche of the customers who visit Zara very well. The clothes are elegant, superior quality and have fantastic finishing. They come in a lot of varieties including party wear, office wear, for kids, for men and women, casuals as well as several others. Even accessories are an integral part of Zara wear.

Strong presence – Zara has kept expanding its presence across the globe. On latest count in 2015, it had 2100 stores worldwide with an average sale of 15.9 Billion per annum. In 2016, it has expanded even further. If it has to survive in retail, Zara has to keep expanding its presence and it is good to know that the brand is doing exactly that.

Brand value – The brand is ranked number 53 by Forbes in its brand ranking and is valued at a whopping 10.7 Billion dollars. There are several positive points leading to the excellent brand equity of Zara. The performance over the years and the consistent quality it has provided has given a boost to the brand in recent years. Besides this, the brand has stayed away from controversies and tried to stay humble even when it came across them. Such a healthy culture has resulted in the brand being loved by its consumers over and over again.

Superb supply chain – Zara is known to get its designs from conception to the stores in 2 weeks whereas it takes other competitors minimum 6 weeks or more, automatically making Zara the trendiest store which has the latest in fashion. On an average, 450 million items are designed every year by Zara. This naturally pushes the consumers to visit the store again and again to check out the latest designs.

Design advantage – Zara has the reputation of launching 1000’s of new designs every year across the globe. As a result, a customer who might visit other stores twice or thrice a year to check out the latest in fashion, might have to visit Zara every month to see whats new in Zara. Because of their strong design advantage, the customer keeps buying fashion forward clothing from Zara besides purchasing the basics from the brand as well. Some customers dedicate their complete wardrobe to Zara clothing. All of Zara’s designs are elegant yet trendy, and are loved by their customers.

Low cost and higher profits – Because of their design advantage and fantastic physical evidence in stores, Zara rarely advertises its products. It relies completely on its trendy image to pull the customers to its stores. This is the reason that Zara has very low cost of operations and at the same time has high margins. It spends most of its earnings and profits on backward integration and on supply chain rather then spending it on Advertising.

Physical evidence of stores – Another strong positive of Zara is that the service has very good physical evidence of the stores. Whenever you walk into the store, you will get this open minded feeling instead of feeling cramped like you do in other showrooms. Zara uses a wide and deep store layout so that customers would love to walk around the store while picking up and trying out their favorite designs.

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of Zara

Generalised collection – Zara does not specialise in anything and has everything for everyone. One of the reasons that a customer shifts to a competitor is when the competitor is focused on one thing. It might be shirts, it might be pants, it might be dresses or party wear or whatever. Such immediate focus is lacking in Zara and it is good for the day to day wear or trendy wear.

Lack of advertising – While it may lead to a cost advantage and cost is one of the strengths of Zara, the lack of advertising is a weakness because the brand can double its profit and its turnover by advertising its collection. It is known to be a trendy fashion outlet and it can easily pull in more customers with advertising which will generate a lot of positive word of mouth for the brand.

Low safety stock – A regret which Zara stores have is that stocks which are fast moving rarely have a safety buffer behind it. Low inventory is kept at Zara as a strategy to keep customers walking into the stores to check out the latest items. But it also means that if a particular design is a hit with the customers, it wont reach its potential because there is no safety stock or buffer for this design.

Opportunities in the SWOT analysis of Zara

Online E-commerce – Zara can definitely take advantage of the online buying trend and make its clothes available not only in its own stores but also on other E-commerce stores as well thereby bringing a hike in sale.

Backing some flagship designs – One of the common traits of top brands is that they have some designs which are flagship designs of their stores. This is lacking in Zara and hence, there should be some designs which should always be sold from a Zara store, bringing in great demand for these designs and building even more brand identity for the brand.

Growing market potential – Wherever Zara is currently existing, he brand is becoming more and more popular, thereby resulting in growing market potential. A rise in earning potential of consumers results in rise in demand for status symbols. Zara is one such status symbol in clothing industry which consumers love to wear. Hence, Zara needs to capitalize on the growing market potential of existing markets.

Market expansion – New markets will always give new business and potentially profitable business to Zara. It needs to keep a constant eye on emerging markets, where the spending power is rising and where people can spend on a semi premium brand like Zara so that they can wear better and more stylish clothing. Such market expansion insures the clothing brand against saturation in developed countries where the competition is too high.

Threats in the SWOT analysis of Zara

Low advertising – Zara needs to ask this question to itself. Looking back, will Zara think that it made a mistake by not advertising its unique brand proposition from the start? The way that Zara keeps rotating design, it can rope in a lot more consumers if it advertises the fact that you will get the latest in designs from Zara. But maybe, if its consumer base increases tremendously, coming up with new designs and differentiating itself will become more and more difficult. So, the debate of whether Zara should advertising or not, will be going on in the management room of Zara itself.

Competition – Zara is not the only one which is known for its chic design. Vero moda, H&M and Mango are also loved for its design. But the advantage to Zara is that the other brands are quite costly when compared to Zara whereas Zara gives much better designs at affordable prices. However, this competition leads to saturation in the semi premium segment indirectly affecting the margins.

Reach  – Zara needs to increase its reach tremendously. Zara operates exclusively through its own stores and does not have shop in shop kind of stores or smaller displays (at least in Asia). This is where the competition gets its tremendous volumes from. But these volumes are missing in Zara and the only answer to this is that Zara increase its reach. If it does not, then competitors will eventually affect the brand equity of Zara because of their sheer power of penetration.

Gap 

is known for providing jeans, khakis, and T-shirts. The firm built its iconic casual brand on basics

for men, women, and children, but over the years has expanded through the urban chic chain

Banana Republic and ailing budgeter Old Navy. All Gap clothing is private-label merchandise made

exclusively for the company.

• Classic casuals

• Slow reaction time to changing trends

• Failure to attract young shoppers

• Never taken off abroad

• All basics at all price

8

• Nine month cycle

• Chronic overstock problem

• 3000 stores

• low profit %

A swot analysis must be developed for Gap  in diagram (reword, Not part of word count)

Gap Inc. SWOT analysis

Strengths

Gap Inc.’s portfolio comprises Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, and Intermix brands, addressing the needs of different customer segments within clothing and fashion industry. Gap is associated with optimistic American casual style, whereas Athleta offers performance and lifestyle apparel for the fitness-minded woman. Moreover, there is a range of Gap sub-brands such as GapKids, GapBody, GapMaternity, GapFit and babyGap that effectively appeal to the needs and preferences of relevant customer segments. Gap Inc’s current strong portfolio of distinct brands is a considerable strength from a viewpoint of appealing a wider customer segment with positive implications on the volume of revenues.

Gap Inc. is a global company with almost 3,700 stores worldwide, including company-operated stores in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Japan, China and Italy, and franchise stores in Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.[1] The global presence of the brand plays an integral role in terms of market penetration of new products along with providing substantial benefits in the forms of economies of scale.

The company’s product portfolio comprises a set of timeless iconic products such as 1969 Denim Jeans, khakis and worker shirt. These products are credited for Gap’s global success, among other factors. It can be argued that company is set to benefit from its timeless iconic products for the foreseeable future due to their steady popularity among the target customer segment for several decades.

Gap Inc. maintains strategic relationships with its more than 1000 suppliers with factories in about 40 countries[2]. The company visits about 1,000 factories that makes its clothes each year assessing and fixing issues and assisting to increase their capabilities[3]. In 2016, the company embraced supplier transparency practices disclosing the list of factories that produce its clothes around the world.

Weaknesses

Declining sales and profits2 is a major weakness the company is failing to address for the last two years. Net sales for fiscal 2015 decreased 4 percent to USD 15.8 billion compared with USD 16.4 billion for fiscal 2014. Gross profit for fiscal 2015 was USD 5.7 billion compared with USD 6.3 billion for fiscal 2014.[4] Although, GAP’s CEO Art Peck introduced a set of initiatives to address the issues such as re-focusing on core products, start selling on Amazon and intensification of international market expansion, these strategies may fail to get the business back into the profitability track.

GAP is lagging behind the competition in terms of efficient utilization of online sales channel. The company launched Piperlime, an online brand in 2006 to offer a mix of private label and branded apparel and accessories. “Despite efforts to publicize the brand, including via cameo appearances on the reality design show Project Runway, it never gained the currency or clear identity of Gap’s other main brands.”[5] While there are many factors that caused Piperlime to fail, lack of GAP’s competency in efficient utilization of online sales channels was one of the major factors…

Gap Inc. Report contains the full discussion of Gap Inc. SWOT analysis. The report also illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces, Value Chain analysis and McKinsey 7S Model on Gap Inc. Moreover, the report contains analysis of Gap Inc.’s marketing strategy, its leadership and organizational structure and discusses the issues of corporate social responsibility.