Inditex, owner of the popular Zara clothing shop, has recorded another vast leap in profits.
Turnover for the Spanish retail leader was €16.7bn, up by nearly €1bn from the €15.9bn recorded last year.
Its online sales hit a record of €553m, a jump of 42%, despite online trade accounting for only 3% of overall sales.
Nevertheless, online activity propelled 20% of the company’s growth over the past year.
Inditex went online in 2007 first with Zara Home. In 2011 it put all of its brands on the internet, such as Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear and Stradivarius.
Currently, people in 27 countries can shop online for Inditex brand names.
In one of those, China, the Zara website already brought in 8% of sales, but last month Inditex launched Zara on a subsidiary of Alibaba, China’s leading e-commerce group, alongside Burberry, Calvin Klein and Gap.
