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Modest, Frugal, Retiring, and Famous for Being Anonymous: the Founder of Zara, Amancio Ortega

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According to Bloomberg, Ortega’s net worth is a whopping $71.5 billion as of June 2, 2015. However, Bloomberg’s data notes that since last year, Gates’ net worth has decreased by $1.1 billion, while Ortega’s has increased by an impressive $10.4 billion. His immense wealth has allowed him to hobnob with celebrities and royalty.

Zara Story – Profile, History, Founder, Products, Stores, Locations

  • And, despite stepping down as chairman of Inditex in 2011, Ortega continued to go to the office every day to sit with his young designers and buyers.
  • In August 2013, Ortega’s ex-wife, who had become Spain’s richest woman, died at age 69.
  • For the first time with Rosalía Mera, who co-founded Zara with him, and then he married Flora Pérez Marcote in 2001.
  • He’s the largest shareholder of the Inditex group and after he retired from his post as Chairman of the company, Pablo Isla took his place as the CEO and Chairman.

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. In 1991, in addition to geographic expansion, Ortega began to expand Inditex’s retail portfolio beyond the flagship Zara format, with the launch of Pull&Bear, an urban fashion chain, and the acquisition of 65% of Massimo Dutti, then a men’s fashion brand. (It acquired the remaining 35% in 1994 and soon added a women’s line.) In 1998, Ortega introduced Bershka, another entirely new retail format targeting the young female market. In 2023, 560,000 tonnes of organic cotton were produced globally, according to Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that works with farmers and brands to promote lower-impact raw materials.

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Zara, part of the Spanish company Inditex, was founded by Amancio Ortega in 1975. Initially named “Zorba” after the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, the name was changed to “Zara” due to a nearby bar also having the same name. Zara’s business model, called “instant fashion,” also allows fast adaptation to trends, leading to its rapid global expansion. By 1985, Zara had created a distribution system that minimized lead times.

In fact, Ortega has yet to own an office; he works from various design areas and factories instead. The billionaire’s only published photograph until 1999 was an old national ID. He learned how to make dressing gowns and lingerie with his first wife, Rosalia Mera, with whom he had two children.

But in line with a long-term strategy announced in 2023, and following a major scandal last year, Inditex has indicated that cotton certified under the programme no longer qualifies as lower-impact in its book. The businessman has made it clear since 2008 that he intends to hand the company over to his daughter, Marta Ortega Perez, who already serves as the chair of the brand. And, despite stepping down as chairman of Inditex in 2011, Ortega continued to go to the office every day to sit with his young designers and buyers. Ortega reportedly frequents the same coffee shop every day and eats lunch in his company’s cafeteria. Recently, Zara has cultivated a unique advantage with their 4Es approach to marketing focusing more on experience, evangelism, exchange, and every place strategies for the customers, rather than the old product price, place, and promotion of the brand.

World’s Largest Fashion Clothing Retailer

The office building was the tallest in Spain at the owner of zara brand time, but it’s now the tenth-tallest building in the country. Zara is a Spanish clothes and accessories brand, it is the flagship brand of the Inditex group. Few clothing brands keep up with the latest fashion, are of high quality and yet, affordable.

Yet compared to the world’s other richest people, he has chosen to keep a low profile, avoiding interviews and media appearances whenever possible. Ortega protects his privacy so fiercely that, when he made his first public appearance in 2000, in advance of the Inditex IPO, the fact made headlines in the Spanish financial press. Until 1999, no photograph of Ortega had ever been published—and he has granted very few interviews to journalists over his entire career.

This is the story of how Ortega seized the opportunity to start his own small clothing business, growing it into one of the most successful retail operations in the world. The company has evolved quite impressively over the years ever since its establishment in the market. Zara is the only multinational clothing retailer that changes its clothing designs every two weeks on average. On the other hand, its competitors change their designs every two to three months. This multinational clothing company owns multiple clothing brands such as Zara Home, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius, Lefties, Uterque, Oysho, and Bershka. Interestingly, the company’s flagship store is Zara it owns all the stores of Zara all around the world.

After that first brainstorm, Ortega never veered from the two core principles—customer preference and speed—that enabled him to build Inditex. Ortega, the 86-year-old founder of the Zara fashion brand and the multinational clothing group Inditex, has built a business which has dominated high street fashion for decades. He remains the driving force of his empire, and with a fortune estimated to be in the region of $72.8bn — making him the wealthiest individual in Europe.

  • The move is part of a previously announced strategy to shift Inditex’s material mix, the company says.
  • When he is not working and driving Zara towards success, Ortega loves horseback riding.
  • Inditex SA serves as Europe’s leading fashion retailer and carries brands that include Massimo Dutti, Uterque, Zara Home, Stradivarius, Bershka, Oysho, and Pull&Bear.
  • Most of his fortune has come from Inditex, the world’s largest clothing retailer from which the billionaire has received more than €4 billion in dividends.

Flagship store in China

Ortega Gaona first ventured into retail in his early teens, working as store assistant at Gala, a local shirtmaker and tailor located in his town of A Coruña. In 1963, Ortega launched his own manufacturing company Confecciones Goa S.A., forming sewing cooperatives with local women and offering fast production turnaround. In 1975, with the business growing steadily and having acquired several factories in Spain, Ortega opened his first store in A Coruña, just a few blocks from where he worked as a teenager.

By the time a product arrived, fashion-conscious shoppers wanted something different. Zara is also known to be one of the few clothing brands that produces 100 % toxic-free clothing, but not until after the uproar that was caused on how it was using the cancer-inducing azo dyes in its clothing. In 1949, at the age of 13, Ortega went to work as an assistant to a luxury shirtmaker in his hometown of La Coruña, where he learned to make clothes by hand.

Instant fashion

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. 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. From the beginning, the company’s USP was producing good quality, fashionable clothing at a low price.

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At one point, Ortega owned the Pazo de Dodro farm and estate near La Coruna. The estate was the site of his daughter Marta’s first wedding, Spanish news site El Mundo reported. Since Inditex’s initial public offering in 2001, Ortega has received more than 12 billion euros, or about $13 billion, in dividends. Most of that cash has been reinvested in real estate through his company’s investment arm, Pontegadea, per Bloomberg.

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