LONDON: Around 1,200 high-street Zara fashion stores will be closed worldwide - a decision by the owner, Inditex, to boost online sales during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to The Guardian, Inditex, a Spanish company said it planned to close between 1,000 to 1,200 smaller branches with losses focused on brands other than Zara.
Inditex also owns clothing brands such as Bershka, Pull & Bear and Massimo Dutti.
The closures are expected to concentrate in Asia and Europe, while 107 Zara stores in United Kingdom will be less affected.
Inditex said the number of staff will remain stable with workers being offered other roles such as to dispatch online purchases.
The number of Zara branches will fall to about 6,700 to 6,900 including 450 new stores from the current 7,412 after restructuring.
It is understood that larger stores will serve as a distribution hubs for online sales.
Inditex, one of the largest clothing retailers in the world, was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, with sales down to 44 per cent or 3.3 billion Euros (RM15.9 billion) in the first quarter of the financial year, between Feb 1 and Apr 30.
It also recorded a net loss of 409 million Euros (RM1.97 billion) in the first quarter while almost a quarter of its shops remained closed since June 8.
Inditex, however, found that the increase in online sales managed to balance out the losses.
The move to focus on online sales was to fend Inditex against other high-street fashion retailers such as Uniqlo, H&M as well as online based clothing retailers Asos and Boohoo which reportedly had been making profits during the lockdown caused by the pandemic.