阅读理解Zara is one of the world's most successful fashion retail brands – if not the most successful one. With its dramatic introduction of the concept of "fast fashion" retail since it was founded in 1975, Zara aspires to create a responsible passion for fashion amongst a broad spectrum of consumers, spread across different cultures and age groups. There are many factors that have contributed to the success of Zara but one of its key strengths is its ability to put customers first. Zara is obsessed with its customers, and they have defined the company and the brand's culture right from the very beginning.Zara's unrelenting (不懈的) focus on the customer is at the core of the brand's success and the heights it has achieved today. There was a fascinating story around how Zara co-creates its products leveraging (利用) its customers' input. In 2015, a lady named Miko walked into a Zara store in Tokyo and asked the store assistant for a pink scarf, but the store did not have any pink scarves. The same happened almost simultaneously for Michelle in Toronto, Elaine in San Francisco, and Giselle in Frankfurt, who all walked into Zara stores and asked for pink scarves. They all left the stores without any scarves – an experience many other Zara fans encountered globally in different Zara stores over the next few days.Seven days later, more than 2,000 Zara stores globally started selling pink scarves. 500,000 pink scarves weredispatched– to be exact. They sold out in three days. How did such lightning-fast stocking of pink scarves happen?Customer insights are the holy grail (梦寐以求的东西) of modern business, and the more companies know about their customers, the better they can innovate and compete.Due to Zara's competitive customer research capabilities, its product offerings across its stores globally reflect unique customer needs and wants in terms of physical, climate or cultural differences. It offers smaller sizes in Japan, special women's clothes in Arab countries, and clothes of different seasonality in South America. These differences in product offerings across countries are greatly facilitated by the frequent interactions between Zara's local store managers and its creative team.