Amancio Ortega

Amancio Ortega is a Spanish fashion executive and founding chairman (1985) of the Spanish clothing merchandiser Inditex (Industria de Diseño Textil, SA), which included the Zara chain store.

As a youth in A Coruña, in northwestern Spain, Ortega gained an entry into the garment business by working as a delivery boy for a men’s shirt store and as an assistant in a tailor’s shop—jobs that exposed him to the costs of manufacturing and delivering clothing directly to customers. He later managed a clothing store that, like the men’s shirt store, catered to a wealthy clientele. Ortega saw an opportunity to expand his client base by using less-expensive materials and more-efficient manufacturing systems and by competitively pricing garments. He first applied the approach to a bathrobe business, Confecciones Goa, which he founded in 1963.

Ortega founded the first Zara ready-to-wear clothing store in A Coruña in 1975, and it became not only an internationally famous chain but also the flagship of holding company Inditex, which he founded 10 years later. He remained the majority owner of the holding company, which in 2008 included the brands Stradivarius, Pull and Bear, Uterqüe, Massimo Dutti, and Oysho, in addition to Zara. The operations of all Inditex businesses were based on the so-called fast-fashion concept: at fashion shows trend spotters picked up design ideas, in-house designers copied the best concepts, and Inditex’s highly efficient manufacturing operations, most of which were based in Spain, produced and delivered new fashions to stores just a few weeks after they had been spotted on fashion runways. In an era in which most clothing manufacturers outsourced production to China and other low-cost locations, Inditex produced two-thirds of its garments in Spain and surrounding countries.

New arrivals in the Zara stores were not limited to the traditional fashion seasons of fall, winter, spring, and summer; rather, they were received year-round, on a weekly basis. Styles that did not sell were quickly removed from stores. The fast-fashion concept was so popular with customers that Zara, with more than 1,000 outlets worldwide, spent relatively little on advertising.

Although Ortega enjoyed tremendous international success in an industry that fed on public images and publicity, he himself shunned the press and lived a strictly private life. On the day of Inditex’s public offering in 2001, Ortega reportedly worked a regular schedule and ate lunch in the company’s cafeteria—despite the fact that his net worth had risen by $6 billion. In 2008 Inditex emerged as the world’s largest fashion retailer, controlling some 4,000 stores in 70 countries. Ortega, meanwhile, had become one of the world’s top billionaires. In 2011 he stepped down as chairman of Inditex, though he remained involved with the company and retained his majority stake.