Inditex to open first stores in Iraq in 2025

Inditex is adding a new market and will be present in a total of 215 countries by the end of 2025, with the opening of its first stores in Iraq. This was announced by the chief executive officer of Zara’s parent company, Óscar García Maceiras, coinciding with the presentation of the company’s annual results recorded during its last full year of 2024.

As part of the sustained growth strategy and optimisation of its commercial channels, Inditex will launch in Iraq in 2025. This market opening will be carried out by all its main fashion chains, with the inauguration of their respective first stores in the Middle Eastern country, inside the Iraq Mall shopping centre. The new megamall, of approximately 550,000 square metres, is scheduled to open its doors by the end of 2025 in Baghdad, the country’s capital, specifically in the Al-Dora district, on the southern bank of the Tigris River as it passes through the city, with over a hundred restaurants and 350 shops, supermarkets, apartments and even a luxury hotel, with the aim of standing out as the largest shopping and leisure centre in the entire region.

“We are very excited,” said Maceiras regarding Inditex’s upcoming launch in Iraq. As the group’s main chains gradually open their doors there, the country will become the 215th market in which the Spanish fashion multinational will be present, and the 98th in which it will do so through physical retail. Therefore, this dual launch, both physical and digital, will allow the company to ensure that it can provide its new customers in Iraq with the same omnichannel shopping experience that it already offers to customers in the 97 markets in which Inditex currently operates through physical and digital channels.

Bershka’s first stores in Sweden and Denmark, and Oysho’s in the Netherlands and Germany, by 2025

The opening of Inditex’s first stores in Iraq will be carried out as part of the company’s sustained strategy of growth and optimisation of its sales channels, both physical and digital, on which it continues to advance during 2024. During the year, the company opened 257 stores in 47 markets, inaugurations that were carried out alongside the renovation of 254 stores, including 121 expansions, and the closure of -386 points of sale, resulting in a net loss of -129 points of sale, from the 5,692 stores that the group had at the end of its 2023 financial year, to the 5,563 stores with which it closed the 2024 financial year, 4,429 of which are self-managed and 1,134 operating under franchise agreements. This contraction of its physical commercial network has not, however, meant a loss of sales area, which, on the contrary, closed the year with an increase of two percent, from 4.55 million square metres of sales area in 2023, to 4.65 million square metres of sales area in 2024.

Among all the initiatives carried out in terms of optimisation and expansion of its physical commercial network during 2024, Inditex’s management highlighted the opening of the group’s first physical stores in Uzbekistan. The company opened this new market, the 97th in terms of physical retail sales only, and the 214th in terms of physical and online sales, in 2024 with the inauguration of the first physical stores in the country, and the launch of their respective e-commerce platforms, for its Zara, Zara Home, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius and Oysho chains. All openings were carried out during 2024, which is the most direct precedent of the strategy that Inditex will now carry out in its entry into Iraq in 2025.

Alongside its arrival in Iraq, among the main expansion and growth strategies that the company will implement throughout 2025, in the search for that strategic objective in which they maintain their focus in order to continue unlocking all the growth potential that the group and its various brands continue to demonstrate, Bershka will open its first physical store in Sweden. This growth into a new market will be carried out in parallel by Bershka, in its case also together with Massimo Dutti, also opening its first stores in Denmark; with Stradivarius doing so in Austria; and with Oysho opening its first stores in the Netherlands and in Germany.

Meanwhile, with a focus on the US, a market in which Inditex remained at the end of 2024 with the same 99 points of sale it had at the end of 2023, losing one Zara point of sale and adding the new Massimo Dutti store in Miami, the company aims to carry out eight opening and renovation projects for 2025. It has not been specified how many of these projects will be new openings, but in any case, they would be part of the 30 projects of openings, relocations and expansions that the company announced for the US in March 2023.