The Inditex Group arrives in Shanghai with the grand opening of its first store located in the mayor shopping area of the city, the largest in China. Spread over two floors, the store is located in a 100-year old building in the busiest shopping street of the city, at the junction of Nanjing West Road and Shanxi North Road, one of the major commercial areas of the city. With 2,000 m2 of retail space and 30 metres of frontage, the store is the result of a complex project that has seen the shop front recover its original appearance and that has unified two separate spaces which served different purposes in the past.

Nanjing Road is regarded as the busiest commercial area in Shanghai. In its western stretch, where the Zara store is situate, upscale international retailers and shopping malls are found, in addition to the largest international hotels and many diplomatic missions. In fact, the building that Zara occupies housed the Spanish consulate in the city in the twenties. 

The works carried out by Zara have allowed the building to recover the initial appearance of its shop front, by removing any decorations added across the years, and respecting the original architectonic structure. Local materials have been used both for the exterior and the interior, such as stone-covered shop front and floors. The project has allowed the interior connection of two distinctive spaces, as were a movie theatre and a large coffee shop, which did not respect the original layout of the building. The store has two retail floors connected both by stairs and an elevator, with the women and children departments on the ground floor and menswear on the first floor. 

With this launching in Shanghai, to be followed up by new openings both in said city and in Beijing throughout 2006, the Inditex Group is present in 62 markets with upwards of 2,700 outlets. In the Asian-Pacific area, Inditex has 35 stores open in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.