After three years of absence, the Inditex group returns to Venezuela. For now, this will happen with a single Zara store, which will be built in the same place where the old one was, in the Sambil Shopping Center, the largest in Caracas. Sources and intermediaries in the industry assure that the return of Zara and other brands of the Spanish group such as Oysho, Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear or Bershka – which are very popular in the country – could take place in April.
Inditex's new agreement with Venezuela sees the same franchise partner operating, the Futura Group, owned by Camilo Ibrahim, who was also a local partner of Inditex before his departure from Venezuela in 2021 and has made similar arrangements on behalf of of the company to operate in other regions of Inditex the Caribbean.
Ibrahim – a successful businessman who owns restaurants and cafes in Venezuela – continued to sell Inditex-branded clothing in other stores he owned after the group's departure.
Until about ten years ago, Amancio Ortega's Spanish company had a very profitable market in Venezuela, with branches spread across most cities. Inditex decided to exit in 2021, in the final phase of the economic collapse that began in 2014 at the start of Nicolás Maduro's government and was exacerbated by increasing international isolation and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Starting in 2015, stores were gradually closed as they faced low sales, hyperinflation, fines, the siege of bureaucracy, currency and price controls, and constant inspections.
Inditex had been considering returning to Venezuela for several months, particularly after the Maduro government decided to free corporate governance and imports from controls and after the economy began to show signs of growth after a six-year quagmire.
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