Bloomberg reported in 2012 that he eschewed an office to sit among the designers and fabric experts at Zara’s headquarters, while another report said he typically ate lunch with his employees in the company cafeteria every day. The office building was the tallest in Spain at the time, but it’s now the tenth-tallest building in the country. Since stepping down from an active operating role at Inditex, Ortega has focused on preserving his fortune by expanding his real estate holdings, which Bloomberg valued at €15.2 billion ($17.2 billion) in 2020—the largest real estate portfolio among European billionaires. Zara is a Spanish clothes and accessories brand, it is the flagship brand of the Inditex group.
In that time, Ortega has also grown his business by acquiring and launching other fashion brands, which now fall under the Inditex umbrella. Inditex is considered the largest fashion retailer on the planet, turning out $29 billion in sales in 2018. Over the next 10 years, Ortega took the business through a rapid series of expansion milestones. In 1977, company headquarters and Zara’s first garment factories were established on the outskirts of La Coruña. By 1983, there were nine Zara stores in shopping districts across cities in Spain; in 1984, the company’s first logistics center opened in that same central hub outside La Coruña. In 1985, as Ortega was preparing to launch the Zara brand internationally, Inditex was officially incorporated as the parent company for Zara.
- In 1985, as Ortega was preparing to launch the Zara brand internationally, Inditex was officially incorporated as the parent company for Zara.
- Amancio Ortega developed the business model that would later be called fast fashion, revolutionizing the retail fashion industry and becoming one of the world’s richest men in the process.
- However, US consumers tend to know little about not only the parent company driving its success but also its sister brands around the world.
- Since Zara’s billionaire founder Amancio Ortega opened the first Zara store in northern Spain in 1975, it has grown to become an enormous, over 2,000-store chain, with a presence in 96 countries around the world.
- The estate was the site of his daughter Marta’s first wedding, Spanish news site El Mundo reported.
- Oysho doesn’t currently have a store presence in the US, and much to the annoyance of some shoppers, you are unable to order items online and have them delivered to a US address.
What Is the Secret of Ortega’s Business Model?
Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothing retailer, according to Bloomberg. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands, including Zara, one of the best-known and most successful fashion brands in the world with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries, according to Forbes. Amancio Ortega is the founding chair of retail giant Inditex, the parent company of Zara, the largest global fashion retailer.
Massimo Dutti was originally a men’s fashion label that was acquired by Inditex in 1991. Several years later, it added women’s wear to its offering, and in 2003, kids also joined. Since Zara’s billionaire founder Amancio Ortega opened the first Zara store in northern Spain in 1975, it has grown to become an enormous, over 2,000-store chain, with a presence in 96 countries around the world. He vowed never to let his family suffer poverty again, left school, and went to work in a shirt shop. According to Forbes magazine, external, experts in estimating the bank balances of the world’s wealthiest, Mr Ortega’s fortune overtook that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Wednesday and Thursday this week, before fluctuating share prices pushed it back into second place.
Fast fashion—the massively successful business model that Ortega had first developed in the 1960s—was off and running. Through the Pontegadea company, he brings together all his assets based on real estate investment and financial investments. Internationally, he also owns properties in five other major European capitals (Paris, Berlin, Rome, Lisbon and London). It is no surprise that Zara, which started off as a small store in Spain is now the world’s largest retailer and its founder, Amancio Ortega, the 4th richest man in the world. “But in 10 to 15 years’ time there are likely to be more competitors operating a similar business model.” And it’s not a model that can be easily copied by other brands, which don’t have an established local supply chain, says Simon Bowler, from equity research company, Exane.
She married top Spanish equestrian Sergio Álvarez Moya in February 2012, but the couple separated in 2015. In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta — then a model agent and the son of designer Roberto Torretta — at her family’s home in Galicia, Spain, W Magazine reported. He stepped back from company operations in 2011, but his family is still heavily involved with Inditex. His daughter, Marta Ortega Perez, is the non-executive chair; his son-in-law, Carlos Torretta, has held the role of head of communications at Zara; and his brothers-in-law have worked as managing directors at Inditex-owned brands, according to the Financial Times. His retail empire Inditex helped Ortega build his $108 billion fortune, and he also invests his earnings into an expansive commercial real estate portfolio that includes office and residential buildings around the world.
It currently has just over 1,000 stores around the world and pulled in $1.7 million in net sales in 2018. “He’s not one of the rich people who looks at you from the height of his success.” When she pointed out to him the positive news coverage his company had received, he played it down, she says, saying it gave him “vertigo”. Covadonga O’Shea, who has known Mr Ortega for 20 years, says his shyness is rooted in humility, that he feels the company’s success is only partly down to what he has done.
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The building has 492 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments along with a fitness center, yoga studio, dog park, and pet spa. There were no public photographs of him until 1999, and in 2012, Bloomberg noted that he had only ever granted interviews to three journalists. As of April 17, 2024, Ortega had a net worth of $91.5 billion, making him the 15th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amancio Ortega Gaona was born in a small village in northern Spain in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and moved with his family to Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain, in 1949. His father was an itinerant railway worker, his mother worked as a maid, and the family lived in a row house on the railroad tracks. Ortega is very private about his personal life, and as of 2012 he has only given three interviews to journalists.
The 88-year-old Ortega was born in northwestern Spain in 1936, the son of a railroad worker and a stay-at-home mother.
A spokesperson for Mr Ortega says the scale of his success has rather taken the company’s founder by surprise. He was always ambitious for his business but he never focused on personal wealth, and has often expressed his astonishment at how things have turned out, he reports. But if other High Street brands aren’t taking it on, online brands might – companies like Boohoo and Asos are only a fraction of the size of Inditex, but are focusing on shortening the time it takes to react to trends on the High Street and Instagram. By the time a product arrived, fashion-conscious shoppers wanted something different. Ortega sticks to a simple uniform of a shirt and slacks and doesn’t typically wear clothes from his own companies.
With his wealth, he has also built one of the world’s most valuable real estate portfolios. By the early 1960s, Ortega had already developed the core operating principles for the business model that would later be called fast fashion. The secret to Zara’s success largely was because of the way it kept up with street fashion with the changing times. Most other fashion brands would take a whole six months to get their new designs into the market. In the fast-fashion model that Ortega built, Inditex spends more initially to keep production close to home, but its short supply chain means that the entire design-production-delivery team can keep their fingers on the pulse of emerging trends and produce only what will sell.
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In 2022, 49% of the factories supplying Inditex were still located fairly close to corporate headquarters, either in Spain or Portugal, Turkey, or Morocco. Highlights included the 1999 acquisition of Stradivarius (a youth fashion chain), the 2001 launch of Oysho (lingerie), and the 2003 launch of Zara Home (home furnishings)—the company’s first business line outside of the apparel industry. At the turn of the 21st century, as Ortega approached retirement, he decided that taking his family-owned business public was the best path forward. When Inditex listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange at a valuation of €9 billion—one of the most successful initial public offerings (IPOs) of 2001—Ortega’s sale of over 20% of his stake made him the wealthiest man in Spain, with a fortune estimated at over €4.6 billion.
Few clothing brands keep up with the latest fashion, are of high quality and yet, affordable. It is probably the amalgamation of all these qualities that made Zara, the Spanish clothing brand become the go-to fashion brand for all. Stradivarius owner of zara brand was acquired by Inditex in 1999 and was originally a family-owned women’s wear brand.