Ortega, Amancio

▪ 2009

Amancio Ortega Gaona 

born March 28, 1936, Busdongo de Arbas, León, Spain

      In 2008 fashion executive Amancio Ortega, the founding chairman of Spanish clothing merchandiser Inditex (Industria de Diseño Textil, SA), saw his company become the world's largest fashion retailer after it surpassed its chief competitor, American retailer Gap Inc., in first-quarter sales. Inditex, a holding company with more than 3,900 stores in 70 countries, was the brainchild of Ortega, who ranked among the world's top 25 billionaires in 2008 with a net worth of roughly $20 billion.

      As a youth in La Coruña, 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. Each job 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 cheaper materials and more efficient manufacturing systems and by competitively pricing garments. He first applied these concepts to a bathrobe business, Confecciones Goa (his initials, reversed), which he founded in 1963.

      The full realization of this concept, known as fast fashion, was Zara, the internationally famous chain of ready-to-wear clothing stores. Ortega founded the first Zara store in La Coruña in 1975. It became the flagship of holding company Inditex, which he founded 10 years later. He remained the majority owner of the concern, which in 2008 included the brands Stradivarius, Pull and Bear, Uterqüe, Massimo Dutti, and Oysho. All Inditex businesses operated on the same principle: 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 reached Zara stores not just in the traditional fashion seasons of fall, winter, spring, and summer, but on a yearlong 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. Despite Ortega's international success in a business that fed on public images and publicity, however, he himself dressed simply, 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.

Sarah Forbes Orwig

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