Posted On 04/07/2018 – physical – mental (operational, operator,...
The richest man in the world. The site's observer studied the history of the founder of the Zara chain and the Inditex group of companies, the largest organization in the fashion clothing industry.
Amancio Ortega
Amancio's childhood was difficult. The salaries of his parents, a railway worker and a maid, were barely enough to live on; they had to constantly borrow. At the age of 12, Amancio realized that this could not continue for long, and he had to help his family.
In 1950, they had to move from the Spanish city of Busdongo to A Coruña, where his father got a new job. In La Coruña, Ortega began working as a messenger at the local Gala shirt store, which is still open today in the same place. While working at Gala, Amancio learned to sew clothes by hand. A few years later, Amancio got a job as a sales assistant at the La Maja haberdashery, where his brother and sister already worked. In the 60s, he became a manager in one of the city’s stores, and his future wife, 16-year-old Rosalia Mera, took the place of assistant.
Back in the early 60s, Amancio and his wife sewed robes, nightgowns and underwear themselves in a small workshop. By 1972, Amancio had accumulated ideas about running a clothing business, and he and his brother organized their own GOA factory.
There was a high level of unemployment in La Coruña, men worked at sea, leaving their wives to survive for a long time in difficult conditions. Therefore, Ortega was able to attract thousands of women to his factory. Despite the rather low salary, many agreed, because this was the only opportunity to earn money. The materials for sewing were brought from Barcelona on their own, thus cutting out intermediaries.
In 1975, an incident occurred with a partner - an order for a large batch of linen was canceled. Almost all available funds were invested in sewing this order. To save the business, Ortega decided to open his own store in La Coruña. The name "Zorba" had to be abandoned due to registration problems. This is how the first Zara store appeared.
In the late 70s and until the 90s, Zara stores from Galicia spread throughout Spain. In 1985, Ortega founded the company Inditex (Industria de Diseño Textil Sociedad Anónima), all Zara stores were united into a network, which became a subsidiary of Inditex. Things went well, and in 1988 Zara expanded beyond the country. First, a store opened in Portugal, in Porto. A year later, Zara appeared in New York, and a year later - in Paris.
Swimming against the current, Amancio Ortega manages to overtake everyone
Ortega's main ideas have always been relevance, speed and complete control at all stages - from searching for ideas to selling in his stores. These principles still form the basis of Zara.
Products in stores are updated every two weeks, delivery to warehouses must occur within 48 hours. It was precisely this restriction that had to be established during the urgent opening of the first store; Ortega decided to make this rule permanent.
With a very short product renewal cycle, a variety of small batches are brought to stores, which are guaranteed to sell. And if some things are not in demand, they are quickly replaced with more popular ones. On average, it takes 10 days from design development to item appearance in the store. Therefore, tens of thousands of clothing models change in the corporation’s stores every year, and during this time people visit them much more often than competitors’ stores.
Inditex headquarters in Arteixo
Relevance and speed go hand in hand for Ortega. Even at the beginning of the journey, when the company produced dressing gowns, the most fashionable and expensive solutions at that time served as a guideline. This approach still works today, but on a different level.
At Inditex's military-secure headquarters in A Coruña, hundreds of designers and analysts track the latest trends in different regions in real time every day. Sales and customer requests in stores, opinions of bloggers and interesting clothing options on the streets of cities around the world are taken into account.
In-store POS systems allow you to continually collect data about your customers' interests. Previously, company representatives attended fashion shows, immediately transmitting sketches to the designers' headquarters. Zara was often accused of direct copying, especially by Italian designers, but the company rejected all accusations of plagiarism, pointing out that it uses general ideas and trends in its clothes. With the advancement of technology, this way of searching for ideas is no longer necessary.
Inditex Data Center
The company spends no more than 0.3 percent of revenue on promotion, while its competitors spend much more on advertising purposes. In addition, Inditex does not attract famous designers to develop collections. The corporation’s brands are often included in the “fast fashion” category, which the company does not agree with.
This is not our approach at all, we take care of every item, every collection, coordination and production processes
Pablo Isla, President of Inditex
Designers follow the popularity of color schemes and materials, paying attention to individual elements. Social networks are also constantly monitored. Every day, at least 3 new models and patterns are created, which are immediately sent to factories, the most suitable performers are selected, who immediately begin sewing the order.
The most complex models are sewn in Spain, Portugal and Brazil, while simpler ones are sent to factories in Bangladesh, Morocco, Turkey, Vietnam, India and China. Thanks to small batches and production of some goods nearby in Spain, the company’s costs for accounting and storage of goods can be reduced compared to competitors.
Test store layout
Inditex is particularly proud of its logistics department. A huge building is located opposite their headquarters. It is there that supplies flock from all over the world. The department operates at great speed, delivering garments to the US and Europe within 24 hours and 48 hours to Asia and South America.
At Inditex headquarters, full-size mock-ups of stores are assembled for testing. They serve as exact replicas of real stores, with clothes, music, cash registers, only without customers. To make the most efficient use of materials, designers select the most suitable cutting options in special programs.
The company also strictly monitors the amount of harmful substances emitted into the atmosphere, so in its work it uses production optimization systems, which also reduces costs. The company also tries to introduce less harmful production methods in its factories, but Inditex owns only a small number of these factories.
Previously, Ortega himself called his stores every day in order to constantly be aware of what was happening, today this is done with the help of analytics tools. The founder instilled the desire to constantly monitor the needs of customers from the very beginning of the company. The speed with which designers can update products in stores is amazing; competitors take tens of times longer to do this.
In parallel with the development of Zara, Massimo Dutti joined Inditex, buying out 100 percent of the company, and opened new chains - Pull and Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Tempe, Uterque and Lefties. The company went public in 2001 at a valuation of $8 billion.
At the moment, Inditex is the largest group of companies in the fashion market, with more than 6,777 stores in 88 countries, employing 141,192 people. While difficult economic conditions and high unemployment rates persist in Spain, Ortega's corporation continues to grow at a rapid pace and show positive results. In the first half of 2015, Inditex reported revenues of €9.42 billion and income of €1.16 billion, up 26 percent from the same period last year. The company is expanding particularly intensively in China and plans to establish a second focal point for Asia. Every day one new Inditex store opens around the world.
Amancio Ortega is a rather secretive person and very rarely appears in public. In his entire life, the richest Spaniard gave only 3 interviews. It is known that Ortega prefers a simple lifestyle, spending most of his time in Spain.
In 2011, he left his post as president of Inditex, handing it over to Pablo Isla, but owns a controlling stake of 59 percent and still advises employees, taking part in design development. He wears the same set of clothes as a uniform and can have lunch at the diner with the company employees. Ortega is ready to communicate with employees at any level, interested in the opinions of everyone, not just top managers, and he has never had a separate office. Swimming against the current, Amancio Ortega manages to overtake everyone.
According to the Forbes list of billionaires, which is calculated in real time, the richest businessman on the planet is the founder of the Zara chain of stores, Amancio Ortega, who has surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Zara store (Photo: REUTERS 2015)
Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, o founder of the Zara chain of stores, on the basis of which the world's largest clothing retailer Inditex, came out on top in the Forbes World Billionaires Ranking, displacing Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Ortega with a fortune of $79.7 billion became the leader in real-time versions of the rating , which takes into account daily changes in stock prices.
According to Forbes, over the past 24 hours, the Spanish businessman's wealth has grown by 5.2%, or $3.9 billion. As of October 23, 2015, Bill Gates ($78.1 billion) is in second place in this ranking: his fortune is day increased by 0.7%, or by $572 million. Third place was taken by investor Warren Buffett with an estimated fortune of $64.4 billion.
A similar rating is also maintained by Bloomberg (Bloomberg Billionaires Index), however, according to its estimates, as of October 22, Ortega was in second place with a fortune of $75.7 billion, and Bill Gates remained in first place, and Bloomberg estimates the fortune of the Microsoft founder much higher - $83 .8 billion
In the 2015 Forbes annual ranking, Ortega ranks fourth with a fortune of $64.5 billion, followed by Bill Gates ($79.2 billion), followed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim with a fortune of $77.1 billion, and Warren Buffett ($72.7) rounds out the top three. billion).
Amancio Ortega was born into the family of a railway worker in the town of Busdongo in northwestern Spain in March 1936, six months before the start of the civil war in the country. When the child was only three months old, the family moved to the town of Tolosa in the Basque Country because the father got a job there as a station master.
The Ortega family was considered poor, and at age 13, Amancio dropped out of high school and began working to help provide for the family. By that time, he had already been living with his parents for a year in La Coruña, in the province of Galicia: in 1948, his father was sent back to the northwestern part of the country.
Amancio's first place of work was a small atelier called Camiseria Gala, where he held the position of sales assistant (essentially, a messenger). At 17, he went to work for a small chain of haberdashery stores, La Maja, which owned three stores and a warehouse in the area. Also starting as an assistant, Ortega subsequently became a salesman, a traveling salesman and, finally, a manager. In 1960, a girl named Rosalia Mera took over the assistant position once held by Amancio. In 1966, the couple got married.
During these same years, Ortega, having gained the necessary commercial experience at La Maja, began thinking about opening his own business. The first employees of his company - salesmen, seamstresses - were members of his family and his young bride. From the first years of the business, Ortega formulated a principle that he still uses today: creating fashionable and high-quality, but at the same time cheap clothes by reducing textile costs and quickly realizing the product, from designer sketches to the counter.
In 1975, Ortega opened the first Zara brand store in La Coruña, which is still in operation today. Within a few years, the chain of ready-to-wear stores covered the whole of Spain, and by the mid-1980s he decided to diversify the business, starting to work for different categories of the population. In 1985, on the basis of Zara, Ortega created the Inditex holding, which subsequently united all the businessman’s brands. Over the next few years, Inditex included companies such as Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull&Bear and others. With revenue of €18.1 billion and net profit of €2.51 billion at the end of 2014, Inditex is the largest group in the fashion industry.
At the same time, Ortega carried out international expansion: in 1988 he opened the first Zara store in Portugal, a year later in New York, and since 1990 his stores have appeared in Paris, the Middle East and Japan. The first Zara store in Russia opened in 2003. As of October 2015, 86 Zara stores were opened in Russia out of 2.1 thousand in total worldwide. The holding’s eight main brands are represented on the Russian market; 465 of the company’s 6.7 thousand retail outlets operate in Russia.
The richest man in the world. The site's observer studied the history of the founder of the Zara chain and the Inditex group of companies, the largest organization in the fashion clothing industry.
Amancio Ortega
Amancio's childhood was difficult. The salaries of his parents, a railway worker and a maid, were barely enough to live on; they had to constantly borrow. At the age of 12, Amancio realized that this could not continue for long, and he had to help his family.
In 1950, they had to move from the Spanish city of Busdongo to A Coruña, where his father got a new job. In La Coruña, Ortega began working as a messenger at the local Gala shirt store, which is still open today in the same place. While working at Gala, Amancio learned to sew clothes by hand. A few years later, Amancio got a job as a sales assistant at the La Maja haberdashery, where his brother and sister already worked. In the 60s, he became a manager in one of the city’s stores, and his future wife, 16-year-old Rosalia Mera, took the place of assistant.
Back in the early 60s, Amancio and his wife sewed robes, nightgowns and underwear themselves in a small workshop. By 1972, Amancio had accumulated ideas about running a clothing business, and he and his brother organized their own GOA factory.
There was a high level of unemployment in La Coruña, men worked at sea, leaving their wives to survive for a long time in difficult conditions. Therefore, Ortega was able to attract thousands of women to his factory. Despite the rather low salary, many agreed, because this was the only opportunity to earn money. The materials for sewing were brought from Barcelona on their own, thus cutting out intermediaries.
In 1975, an incident occurred with a partner - an order for a large batch of linen was canceled. Almost all available funds were invested in sewing this order. To save the business, Ortega decided to open his own store in La Coruña. The name "Zorba" had to be abandoned due to registration problems. This is how the first Zara store appeared.
In the late 70s and until the 90s, Zara stores from Galicia spread throughout Spain. In 1985, Ortega founded the company Inditex (Industria de Diseño Textil Sociedad Anónima), all Zara stores were united into a network, which became a subsidiary of Inditex. Things went well, and in 1988 Zara expanded beyond the country. First, a store opened in Portugal, in Porto. A year later, Zara appeared in New York, and a year later - in Paris.
Swimming against the current, Amancio Ortega manages to overtake everyone
Ortega's main ideas have always been relevance, speed and complete control at all stages - from searching for ideas to selling in his stores. These principles still form the basis of Zara.
Products in stores are updated every two weeks, delivery to warehouses must occur within 48 hours. It was precisely this restriction that had to be established during the urgent opening of the first store; Ortega decided to make this rule permanent.
With a very short product renewal cycle, a variety of small batches are brought to stores, which are guaranteed to sell. And if some things are not in demand, they are quickly replaced with more popular ones. On average, it takes 10 days from design development to item appearance in the store. Therefore, tens of thousands of clothing models change in the corporation’s stores every year, and during this time people visit them much more often than competitors’ stores.
Inditex headquarters in Arteixo
Relevance and speed go hand in hand for Ortega. Even at the beginning of the journey, when the company produced dressing gowns, the most fashionable and expensive solutions at that time served as a guideline. This approach still works today, but on a different level.
At Inditex's military-secure headquarters in A Coruña, hundreds of designers and analysts track the latest trends in different regions in real time every day. Sales and customer requests in stores, opinions of bloggers and interesting clothing options on the streets of cities around the world are taken into account.
In-store POS systems allow you to continually collect data about your customers' interests. Previously, company representatives attended fashion shows, immediately transmitting sketches to the designers' headquarters. Zara was often accused of direct copying, especially by Italian designers, but the company rejected all accusations of plagiarism, pointing out that it uses general ideas and trends in its clothes. With the advancement of technology, this way of searching for ideas is no longer necessary.
Inditex Data Center
The company spends no more than 0.3 percent of revenue on promotion, while its competitors spend much more on advertising purposes. In addition, Inditex does not attract famous designers to develop collections. The corporation’s brands are often included in the “fast fashion” category, which the company does not agree with.
This is not our approach at all, we take care of every item, every collection, coordination and production processes
Pablo Isla, President of Inditex
Designers follow the popularity of color schemes and materials, paying attention to individual elements. Social networks are also constantly monitored. Every day, at least 3 new models and patterns are created, which are immediately sent to factories, the most suitable performers are selected, who immediately begin sewing the order.
The most complex models are sewn in Spain, Portugal and Brazil, while simpler ones are sent to factories in Bangladesh, Morocco, Turkey, Vietnam, India and China. Thanks to small batches and production of some goods nearby in Spain, the company’s costs for accounting and storage of goods can be reduced compared to competitors.
Test store layout
Inditex is particularly proud of its logistics department. A huge building is located opposite their headquarters. It is there that supplies flock from all over the world. The department operates at great speed, delivering garments to the US and Europe within 24 hours and 48 hours to Asia and South America.
At Inditex headquarters, full-size mock-ups of stores are assembled for testing. They serve as exact replicas of real stores, with clothes, music, cash registers, only without customers. To make the most efficient use of materials, designers select the most suitable cutting options in special programs.
The company also strictly monitors the amount of harmful substances emitted into the atmosphere, so in its work it uses production optimization systems, which also reduces costs. The company also tries to introduce less harmful production methods in its factories, but Inditex owns only a small number of these factories.
Previously, Ortega himself called his stores every day in order to constantly be aware of what was happening, today this is done with the help of analytics tools. The founder instilled the desire to constantly monitor the needs of customers from the very beginning of the company. The speed with which designers can update products in stores is amazing; competitors take tens of times longer to do this.
In parallel with the development of Zara, Massimo Dutti joined Inditex, buying out 100 percent of the company, and opened new chains - Pull and Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Tempe, Uterque and Lefties. The company went public in 2001 at a valuation of $8 billion.
At the moment, Inditex is the largest group of companies in the fashion market, with more than 6,777 stores in 88 countries, employing 141,192 people. While difficult economic conditions and high unemployment rates persist in Spain, Ortega's corporation continues to grow at a rapid pace and show positive results. In the first half of 2015, Inditex reported revenues of €9.42 billion and income of €1.16 billion, up 26 percent from the same period last year. The company is expanding particularly intensively in China and plans to establish a second focal point for Asia. Every day one new Inditex store opens around the world.
Amancio Ortega is a rather secretive person and very rarely appears in public. In his entire life, the richest Spaniard gave only 3 interviews. It is known that Ortega prefers a simple lifestyle, spending most of his time in Spain.
In 2011, he left his post as president of Inditex, handing it over to Pablo Isla, but owns a controlling stake of 59 percent and still advises employees, taking part in design development. He wears the same set of clothes as a uniform and can have lunch at the diner with the company employees. Ortega is ready to communicate with employees at any level, interested in the opinions of everyone, not just top managers, and he has never had a separate office. Swimming against the current, Amancio Ortega manages to overtake everyone.
Zara, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Bershka, Pull&Bear, Uterqüe. Stradivarius – these fashionable clothing stores are known to every modern woman. Did you know that all these brands belong to one production holding - Industria de Diseno Textil Sociedad Anonima (Inditex)? The owner of the holding, Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, has been leading the ranking of the richest people on the planet for several years in a row. In 2012, he was ranked the richest person in Europe by Bloomberg, with a net worth of $39.5 billion. In 2013, his fortune was estimated by Forbes magazine at 57 billion, which put him in third place among the world's billionaires, moving ahead of the legendary Warren Buffett in the ranking. And in 2015 and 2016, according to Forbes, he became the richest person on the planet with a fortune of about $80 billion, overtaking Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the Sultan of Brunei and other world rich people.
How did it happen that the richest man in the world is also the most unknown? We are sure that a little more than everyone has heard the name of Bill Gates, but you are most likely seeing the name Amancio Ortega for the first time. This man does not pose for cameras and never gives interviews. Almost nothing is known about his life; journalists even called him a “paparazzi nightmare.” The only time and for just 15 minutes he allowed journalists to photograph him was in 2001 at a public report of the company. Then he answered only one question - about why he leads such a reclusive lifestyle. The tycoon said that he does not want to be recognized on the street by anyone other than his family and friends. He also asked all his acquaintances not to talk about the details of his life, and no one violated his request.
The more valuable are the crumbs of information that are known about him. And this is what is known about him.
Amancio Ortega Gaona was born on March 28, 1936 in the Spanish provincial town of Busdongo near Leon. The childhood of the richest man on the planet was very ordinary. His parents were not millionaires who gave their offspring a good start in life. Unlike other European billionaires, such as Georg Scheffler, Lilian Bettencourt or Gerald Grosvenor (otherwise known as the Duke of Westminster), he did not inherit his wealth. His parents did not even belong to the middle class. Amancio Ortega's father worked as a railway worker, his mother as a maid. Even during the economic crisis of post-war Spain, Father Ortega's salary was considered very modest - he received only 300 pesetas a month. To understand the size of this amount, imagine that a dozen chicken eggs cost about 30 pesetas - a tenth of this salary. In addition to Amancio, the family had two more children - older brother Antonio and sister Josepha.
The family lived so poorly that Amancio had to quit school and go to work. He was only 13 years old. One day he went grocery shopping with his mother and witnessed a humiliating scene when, despite his mother’s pleas, the seller refused to provide her with further credit for food, because they already owed him a large amount. All the greengrocers, butchers and bakers from the surrounding shops refused to sell on credit, and at some point the family had nothing to eat. This was a turning point in Amancio’s life - his biographer Covadonga O’Shea writes about it: “In these terrible days, he first realized the full drama and all the hopelessness of poverty, which should never be repeated either in his life or in his future family "
The first job of the future textile magnate was working as a courier in a haberdashery store. When Amancio was 14 years old, the family moved to the city of La Coruña, where Amancio’s father was offered a job. There, Amancio got a position in the clothing store "Gala Notariado" on the corner of Federico Tapia and Plaza de Galizia streets. This store still exists. True, according to the owner, the store’s visitors are not so much buying his products - shirts, cardigans and hats - as they are trying to find out details about the youth of the multi-billionaire who once worked here as an errand boy.
Later, Amancio Ortega received a position in one of the Spanish studios. There he learned how to sew clothes, crimp and drape fabrics. Soon he became an apprentice to a fashionable Spanish designer, who once said about him: “Amancio is a hard-working guy, of course, but he won’t become a good tailor. He doesn't know how to communicate with people. The tailor does half the work with his tongue, but he is silent all the time, shy. Let him do something else better; sewing is not his destiny.” Ortega has always been modest, bordering on shyness. The only time journalists were allowed to photograph him, everyone could see how hard it was for him to do so.
While working as an apprentice, Ortega not only learned to sew, studied fashion and developed a sense of beauty. He studied customer needs and thought about how to meet demand. While studying pricing, he saw that the cost of clothing increased as it moved from the sewing room to the warehouse - from the warehouse to the wholesale dealer - from the dealer to the retail store. He realized that if he shortened this path, the price of things would become much more attractive.
But for Ortega, improving logistics wasn't the only way to win over customers. He was always attracted by the idea of making luxury goods accessible to everyone. The idea was not new - many entrepreneurs of that time made their fortune following this path. For example, the founder of Ikea, who made designer furniture accessible to all segments of the population. In the 1960s, Ortega got a job as a sales manager at a clothing store. In addition to working in the store, he began purchasing inexpensive fabrics in Barcelona and sewing clothes from them. For some models, he himself came up with patterns, but mostly he copied clothes from famous fashion designers, adapting them for the mass buyer. His clothes were in great demand; Spanish boutiques began to purchase them. Within 3 years, Amancio had saved enough money to open his own sewing business called Confecciones GOA (the abbreviation GOA is the initials of Amancio Ortega Gaon read backwards). It was a family company, where Amancio himself was in charge of design development, his brother Antonio was in charge of commercial matters, his sister was in charge of accounting, and his wife Rosalia Mera acted as a business partner. The future billionaire began by sewing underwear, dressing gowns and nightgowns.
Amancio Ortega opened his first clothing store shortly before his 40th birthday. It's interesting that this happened unplanned. The GOA garment business received a large order for robes from a German client, and Ortega had already invested all his available money into the tailoring when the client canceled the order at the last minute. To save the company from bankruptcy, Ortega and his wife decided to open their own store and sell their products there. This is how the Zara store was born. They initially wanted to name the store Zorba after Anthony Quinn's character from the movie Zorba the Greek. But the name Zorba was already registered to another company, and after some deliberation the store received the name Zara - this name sounded feminine and exotic (in Spanish it is pronounced “Thara”).
Ten years after the first Zara opened, parent company Inditex was created to handle the rapid expansion. In 1989, Zara's first overseas store was opened in Porto, Portugal. Now, after 40 years of dynamic development, the Zara network includes 2,000 stores in 88 countries. In addition to Zara, Amancio Ortega's company owns the brands Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Bershka, Zara Home, Uterqüe and Lefties.
The richest representative of the fashion world never attends shows, fashion weeks and other public or private industry events. But soon after each fashion week, models appear in Zara stores that are very similar to the prêt-a-porte clothes presented by expensive designers just a few days ago. This situation infuriates fashion designers and delights Zara's clients, who cannot afford an expensive original, and do not see much point in it.
Zara's main feature, which allowed it to get ahead, is its immediate response to customer demand. Firstly, the company was able to reduce the time it takes for new models to go on sale to a ridiculous 10-15 days! Yes, yes, design, pattern development, sewing, delivery to a retail store - all within two weeks! The company's team employs more than 200 designers who respond to the slightest fluctuations in demand. Secondly, in order to better understand the needs of customers, the Zara team analyzes not only actual sales, but also products that customers tried on but for some reason did not buy. This analysis provides an understanding of what needs to be improved and helps identify customer expectations. Thirdly, the company managed to avoid the trend of locating clothing production in Southeast Asian countries to reduce the cost of products. 50% of Zara's clothing is produced in Spain, 26% in other parts of Europe and only 24% in Asia, Africa and other countries. Instead of saving on the quality of tailoring, Zara saves on advertising. According to High Point University economics professor Stephanie Crofton, Inditex spends just 0.3% of its revenue on advertising, versus 3.5-5%, which is roughly what other major clothing brands spend on advertising. Fourthly, Zara produces clothes in super-small batches and never sews even the most successful models a second time. This way they reduce the risks of increasing stocks, and provide clients with some kind of exclusivity.
In 2011, when the Zara founder turned 75, he announced his retirement. The post of president of the holding was taken by former vice president and assistant Pablo Isla. There are rumors that Amancio Ortega plans to make his youngest daughter from his second marriage, Martha, his successor.
In total, Amancio Ortega has three children: daughter Sandra and son Marcos from his first wife Rosalia Mera, and daughter Marta from his second wife Flora Perez Marcote. They say that the billionaire’s eldest daughter has flatly refused to do business. She inherited more than 4.7 billion euros from her mother, who died in 2012, owns 7% of Inditex shares and is one of the richest and most powerful women in Europe, according to Forbes. Son Marcos is not able to manage the company, since he is disabled from birth - the boy was born with cerebral palsy. Soon after his birth, his parents opened a charitable foundation to support children with such disabilities.
The billionaire divorced his first wife in 1986, but there were rumors that by that time the couple had not been a family for a long time, maintaining a relationship only for the sake of business. The billionaire married his second wife in 2001, they are together to this day.
Ortega spends millions of dollars annually to protect his anonymity. There are probably no more than 200 photographs in which you can see him and his family members. Pieces of information about his life can be seen either in the official news of the Zara company, or in his biographies written by the official biographer Covadonga O'Shea (family friend, teacher at the fashion school at the University of Navarra) or Xabier Blanco (Spanish journalist, carefully follows the career of the Zara founder ).
He never gives parties, doesn’t go to public events, and what’s more - he refused an invitation to dinner from the Queen of Spain herself! His modesty is also evidenced by the fact that for many years he lived in a five-story building in La Coruña, and when he worked at the company, he dined in a common dining room with his employees. His daughter Marta, who will inherit her father's fashion empire, worked in the holding, starting from the lowest positions.
The Spanish billionaire knows how to not only earn money, but also spend it. For example, in 2011, Ortega bought the 43-story Picasso skyscraper in central Madrid for $536 million. He also owns a private Falcon 900 jet, a hotel on the Miami coast, various houses and apartments around the world and his own racetrack. The billionaire bought real estate as an investment; he rents out his houses and does not leave La Coruña. But the hippodrome was bought for the soul. Ortega has a real passion for horses and racing, as does his daughter Marta, who even married equestrian star Sergio Alvarez Moya.
The great merit of this man is that he made fashionable designer clothes accessible to everyone, and not just to the elite segments of society. Many have tried to replicate his business model, but so far no one has succeeded. The speed with which he captures fashion trends and translates them into his brand's clothing is truly breathtaking. A lot of things played a role in his success - his own talent, the right people who helped him, his faith in success, and, of course, a happy coincidence of circumstances. But the beginning was made when Ortega saw poverty in all its ugliness, on that memorable day when his mother refused to sell food on credit. That day, the future billionaire promised himself never to humiliate himself or go hungry again. He kept his word.
The list of the richest people in the world has recently been updated. The owner of the investment company Warren Buffett, who had previously secured second place, was overtaken by the owner of the well-known company Zara, Amancio Ortega. In the first place, of course, is Bill Gates, who habitually and confidently holds the title, with others still far from reaching his almost 80 billion dollars.
79-year-old Amancio Ortega is now the owner of a fortune of 66.4 billion dollars (also a considerable amount, but what is it - simply exorbitant!) and also the richest man in Spain.
What does Mr. Ortega own? One of the most famous budget clothing stores, Zara has about 2,000 outlets around the world, of which 483 are in Spain, 84 in Russia, 66 in the UK and 42 in the USA. Today the company generates more than 10.5 billion euros per year. But it all started very simply. In 1975, together with his wife, the entrepreneur opened a small store selling underwear and bathrobes. And who would have thought that in just a couple of years a small “shop” on A Coruña would turn into a network of “doubles of models from famous fashion houses at low prices”, and later into a brand that the whole world knows about.
According to The Telegraph, the company's success lies in super-fast turnover, a record of popular products among customers, an excellent online store and a wide selection. And indeed, in Zara everyone can find something to their liking: from more classic silhouettes in the Woman department to youth clothing in TRF, not to mention the men's and children's departments. Moreover, in addition to a huge selection of styles, there is also a huge number of colors of basic items. And, of course, an impressive selection of shoes and accessories.
Convenience and excellent marketing provided Zara with a constant flow of customers of all classes. Many stars do not disdain a brand that is affordable in terms of price. Among the “fans” of Zara are Kate Middleton, Pippa Middleton, Mischa Barton, Samantha Cameron, Diane Kruger, Shania Grimes, Peneloppa Cruz, Olivia Palermo, Ciara, Ksenia Sobchak, Sati Casanova and many others who prefer practicality, comfort and style in everyday clothes .
