The founder of Zara is the richest man on the planet. Zara founder Amancio Ortega became the richest man on the planet Zara founder became the richest man

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 the same production holding - Industria de Diseno Textil Sociedad Anonima (Inditex)? The owner of the holding, Spanish businessman Amancio Ortega, has been leading in the ranking of the richest people on the planet for several years in a row. In 2012, he was recognized as the richest person in Europe by Bloomberg, with a net worth of $39.5 billion. In 2013, his fortune was already estimated by Forbes magazine at 57 billion, which put him in third place among the world's billionaires, moving the legendary Warren Buffett in the ranking. And in 2015 and 2016, according to Forbes, he became the richest man 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 the same Bill Gates, and you most likely see the name of 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 "the nightmare of the paparazzi." The only time and for only 15 minutes, he allowed journalists to photograph himself 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 he didn't 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 here 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 the most ordinary. His parents were not millionaires who gave their offspring a good start in life. Unlike other European billionaires such as Georg Scheffler, Liliane Betancourt or Gerald Grosvenor (otherwise known as the Duke of Westminster), he did not inherit his wealth. His parents were not even middle class. Amancio Ortega's father worked as a railway worker, his mother was a servant. Even in the conditions of the economic crisis in post-war Spain, Ortega's father'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 leave 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 give her a further loan for groceries, 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 this way: “In these terrible days, he first realized all the drama and all the hopelessness of poverty, which should never again 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 job at the Gala Notariado clothing store on the corner of Federico Tapia and Plaza de Galizia. This store still exists. True, according to the owner, visitors to the store do not so much buy his products - shirts, cardigans and hats - as they try to find out details about the youth of the multibillionaire who once worked here as an errand boy.

Later, Amancio Ortega got a job in one of the Spanish ateliers. There he learned how to sew clothes, shirring and draping fabrics. Soon he got a job as an apprentice to a fashionable Spanish designer who once said this about him: “Amancio is a hard-working guy, of course, but he cannot become a good tailor. He doesn't know how to communicate with people. The tailor does half of the work with his tongue, but he is silent all the time, shy. Let him do something else, 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.

Working as an apprentice, Ortega not only learned to sew, studied fashion and developed a sense of beauty. He studied the needs of customers and thought about how to meet the demand. In his study of pricing, he saw that the cost of clothing rises as you move from the sewing shop to the warehouse - from the warehouse to the wholesale dealer - from the dealer to the retail store. He realized that if you shorten this path, the price of things will become much more attractive.

But for Ortega, improving logistics wasn't the only way to win over a customer. He was always fascinated by the idea of ​​making luxury items available to the public. The idea was not new - many entrepreneurs of that time made their fortune by following this path. For example, the founder of Ikea, who made designer furniture accessible to all segments of the population. In the 1960s, Ortega took a job as a sales manager in a clothing store. In addition to working in the store, he began to buy inexpensive fabrics in Barcelona and sew clothes from them. For some models, he himself came up with patterns, but mostly he copied clothes from famous fashion designers, adapting them to the mass buyer. His clothes were in great demand, Spanish boutiques began to buy them. Within 3 years, Amancio saved up enough money to open his own clothing business called Confecciones GOA (the abbreviation GOA is Amancio Ortega Gaon's initials, read backwards). It was a family company, where Amancio himself was responsible for the development of models, 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, bathrobes and nightgowns.

Amancio Ortega opened his first own clothing store shortly before his 40th birthday. It is interesting that this happened unplanned. GOA garments received a large order for bathrobes from a German client, and Ortega had already invested all the money he had in 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. Thus, the Zara store was born. At first, they 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 got the name Zara, which sounded feminine and exotic (pronounced “Thara” in Spanish).

Ten years after the opening of the first Zara, a parent company, Inditex, was formed to handle the rapid expansion. In 1989, the first overseas Zara store was opened in Porta, Portugal. Now, after 40 years of dynamic development, the Zara network includes 2,000 stores in 88 countries around the world. In addition to Zara, Amancio Ortega owns Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Bershka, Zara Home, Uterqüe and Lefties brands.

The richest representative of the fashion world never attends shows, fashion weeks and other public or private events of the industry. But shortly after each fashion week, Zara stores are filled with designs that are very similar to the prêt-a-porte clothes introduced just a few days ago by high-end designers. This situation infuriates fashion designers and delights Zara customers who cannot afford an expensive original, and do not see much point in it.

The main feature of Zara, which allowed her to get ahead, is an instant response to customer demand. Firstly, the company was able to reduce the time for new models to go on sale to a ridiculous 10-15 days! Yes, yes, design, pattern development, tailoring, delivery to a retail store - all this 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 the actual sales, but also the goods that customers took for fitting, but for some reason did not buy. This analysis gives an understanding of what needs to be improved, helps to identify customer expectations. Thirdly, the company managed to get away from the tendency to locate clothing production in Southeast Asia to reduce the cost of products. Spain produces 50% of Zara clothes, 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 only 0.3% of its revenue on advertising, compared to 3.5-5%, which is about the same as other major clothing brands. Fourth, Zara releases clothes in super-small batches and never re-sews even the most successful models. So they reduce the risks of increasing stocks, and provide customers with some kind of exclusivity.

In 2011, when the founder of Zara turned 75, he announced his resignation. The post of president of the holding was taken by former vice president and assistant Pablo Isla. Rumor has it that Amancio Ortega plans to make his successor the youngest daughter from his second marriage, Marta.

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 eldest daughter of a billionaire flatly refused to do business. She inherited more than 4.7 billion euros from her mother, who died in 2012, owns a 7% stake in Inditex and, according to Forbes, is one of the richest and most powerful women in Europe. Son Marcos is not able to manage the company, since he has been disabled since birth - the boy was born with cerebral palsy. Shortly 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 the couple had not been a family for a long time by that time, keeping the 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 every year protecting his anonymity. Perhaps there will be no more than 200 pictures in which you can see him and his family members. Bits of information about his life can be seen either in the official Zara news 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 tracks the career of the founder of Zara ).

He never arranges parties, does not go to public events, but what is there - 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 lives in a five-story building in A Coruña, and when he worked for the company, he dined in the common dining room with his employees. His daughter Marta, who is to inherit her father's fashion empire, worked in the holding, starting from the lowest positions.

The Spanish billionaire knows how not only to make money, but also to spend. For example, in 2011, Ortega bought the 43-story Picasso skyscraper in downtown Madrid for $536 million. He also owns a Falcon 900 private jet, a hotel on the coast of Miami, 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 A 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 available 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 embodies them in the clothes of his brand is truly breathtaking. Many things played a role in his success - his own talent, and the right people who helped him, and his faith in success, and, of course, a happy coincidence. But the start was made when Ortega saw poverty in all its ugliness, on that memorable day when his mother refused to sell food on credit. On that day, the future billionaire promised himself never to humiliate himself or starve again. He kept his word.

To date, the company "Zara" is known to almost every person. The trading network offers a very large selection of products for its customers and boasts an affordable pricing policy. The company quickly and easily responds to customer requests. It is not surprising that beautiful clothes are so popular with average citizens. Zara is a brand of which country? Who is its founder? What is the history of creation? These and other questions about Zara can be answered in this article. Under the fashionable Spanish brand, clothing is produced for men, women and children. In addition, products such as shoes, accessories, underwear and perfumes are produced.

A few words about the founder

The largest company that cares about its customers and at the same time manages to follow fashion trends is Zara. Whose brand, who stands at its origins? This question interests many mods. Amancio Ortega Gaona is the founder of the network. He was born in a small Spanish town and spent his childhood in poverty. When the boy was 14 years old, he moved with his family to the province of Galicia. There he got a job as an apprentice to an Italian fashion designer. In 1972, as a thirty-seven-year-old man, Amancio Ortega opened his own knitwear factory.

"Zara". Start

The history of the Zara brand began in 1975. It was then that Amancio Ortega, together with his first wife Rosalia Mera, opened his own small shop. It was located on the main street of A Coruña. The future fashion mogul wanted to name his shop Zorba, as his favorite movie was Zorba the Greek. But there were problems with registration, and Amancio had to change the name to ZARA.

Incredibly successful ideas of a Spanish businessman

Gaona was ahead of the Chinese and was the first to realize that making copies of the best things from world famous couturiers is a good and most profitable business. Moreover, such clothes will cost much less. And this means that the average consumer will definitely "bite" on fashionable clothes at a low price. Amancio's concept proved to be very successful. The Zara brand quickly became popular. With crazy speed, outlets began to open in all corners of Spain. In the 1980s, José Maria Castellano joined the Ortega team. Friends together came up with "instant fashion", which became an innovative business system. Also, the newly minted colleagues opened their own design studio, which they called Inditex.

Acceleration of production

After gaining popularity in Spain for ten years, the Zara brand began to appear on the international market. In 1988, the first store abroad was opened. He was in Portugal. But Amancio and his company had another problem. The assortment of clothes was updated too slowly, new models came out only two or three times a year. José Maria Castellano, an information technology expert, was able to solve this problem. He created a unique and innovative model for the manufacture and distribution of products. With the help of special computer development, the company was able to reduce the time between the production of new models and their appearance on sale. This period was only ten to fifteen days.

Design team

The brand "Zara" is widely known all over the world. And this is not at all surprising. After all, for fast and high-quality production of products, the company's leaders in the company decided to hire not one designer, but a whole internal team of stylists, which included more than two hundred people already in the late 1990s. They worked, taking as a basis a collection of fashionable popular clothes. In addition, fashion designers worked on developing their own style for the company. The set course made it possible to quickly respond to new consumer demands and the emergence of the latest fashion trends. Modernization of production and inventory procedures, new computer programs for accounting for goods, as well as highly qualified designers saved ZARA from any losses and the accumulation of a large amount of returnable clothing in warehouses.

New markets

Today, young people love and appreciate products from the company "Zara" (brand country - Spain). But this trading network was able to gain a good reputation in international markets only in 2000. In the 90s, Inditex gradually filled the shelves of the USA, Mexico, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Malta and Cyprus. At the end of the twentieth century, the company also began to supply its products to Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Great Britain, Venezuela and Japan. But the French market became the most suitable for ZARA. New outlets were quickly opened here, which were located in major cities of the country. At the beginning of the 20th century, the company entered the markets of Germany, Holland, Poland, Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe.

Products

The brand "Zara", the origin of which is connected with many interesting facts, produces fashionable men's, women's and children's clothing. In addition, the company produces a line of shoes, cosmetics, accessories and perfumes. The main thing for ZARA designers is to focus all attention on the fashion preferences and requirements of their clients. It is important for the company to satisfy the needs of the buyer, and not to promote new models through shows or other means of influence, which are traditional for the fashion industry.

Pros of Zara

The ZARA retail chain offers its customers a fairly wide range of products, unlike any other companies in the fashion industry. This company produces about eleven thousand different products a year, while competitors produce only two to four thousand. It takes only one month for a company to launch a product from the development stage, and it takes only two weeks to make changes to the design of an already manufactured product. "Zara" responds quickly and easily to current customer requests due to the accelerated production process. If any model is not in demand, then it is immediately removed from sale. Moreover, all orders for its production are canceled, and the company immediately launches products with a new design. It is noteworthy that any product is not in stores for more than one month. For this reason, customers try to visit ZARA brand outlets as often as possible.

Company production capability

Zara is a clothing brand that is a vertically integrated retail chain. The company differs from similar distributors in that it manages the design, manufacture and marketing of its products. Most of the production of goods is under the control of ZARA. Half of the goods are made in Spain, 26% - in other European countries, 24% - in Asia and Africa. The company's competitors manufacture their products in Asian countries. But ZARA produces the most fashionable models only in its own factories, which are located in Spain and Portugal. It is in these countries that wage laborers are paid much cheaper than in the rest of Western Europe. The Zara trading network moves its production to Asia and Turkey only for the manufacture of such goods as standard T-shirts and T-shirts, since they have been on store shelves for quite a long time.

The Life of Amancio Ortega, Founder of ZARA

Amancio Ortega is considered the wealthiest businessman in Spain. He is the person who owns the Zara brand. Now Amancio is ranked fourth in the ranking of the richest people on the planet. His capital totals sixty-four billion dollars. When the Inditex corporation was doing remarkably well, and Zara even overtook its main competitor H&M in terms of income, the founder of the company began to have family problems. Amancio Ortega and his first wife, Rosalia Mera, went through the most difficult moments in the development of their business together. They had two children - daughter Sandra and son Marcos, who had a severe form of disability. In 1985, the couple officially terminated their relationship. After the divorce, 7% of the shares of Inditex passed to Rosalia, who died in 2013, and her daughter Sandra Ortega Mera inherited her fortune. Amancio married a second time to his assistant Flores Perez Marcote. They still live in perfect harmony today. They have a daughter, Marta, who works for Amancio's company. A few years ago, Ortega stepped down as chairman of Inditex at the age of 78. He handed over the reins of government to young and enterprising people. Now Amancio leads a rather secluded life and does not communicate with journalists.

"Instant fashion" company "Zara"

The Zara brand is part of the Inditex corporation. The same group includes such world famous brands as Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Uterque, Stradivarius, Oysho and Pull&Bear. ZARA clothing is a combination of design approach and democratic prices. Now the clothing of this brand is the best-selling all over the world. New clothing lines hit the market with lightning speed, and they are updated quite often. More than four hundred designers are working on the creation of new models. The creator of ZARA himself called this approach “instant fashion”. Clothes don't stay on store shelves unless they're in demand. It is quickly removed from production and a new one is created. To date, 1,600 ZARA stores have been opened in seventy-seven countries around the world.

Zara clothes are worn by queens and students, movie stars and clerks. The dark paper bags from these shops can be found on the streets of cities all over the world. The Inditex group, which in addition to Zara also includes the brands Pull&Bear, Bershka, Stradivarius and others, is one of the largest players in the international clothing market. It allows millions of shoppers to wear inexpensive fashionable clothing. Most of them do not know that all this was created by the entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, who, together with his family, turned a small sewing workshop into an international corporation.

The Village read the book The Zara Phenomenon, recently published by Eksmo, and learned how one of the most famous clothing brands in the world came into being.

Difficult childhood

“I remember one afternoon after school I went with my mother to get some food. I was very young, and she met me at school. Therefore, very often
I went shopping with her. The store we went to was one of those big grocery stores with such a tall counter, so tall that I didn't really see who was talking to my mother, but I heard a male voice saying what I had carried through
time and never forget: "Josefa, I'm sorry, but I can no longer sell you goods on credit." I was shocked. I was only 12."

On that day, the son of the Spanish railway worker Amancio Ortega decided that such an incident with his mother would never happen again. He left school and took a job as a sales assistant in a tailor shop in the town of A Coruña. Buyers immediately noticed the diligent boy, and his family's business went uphill.

At 17, Amancio left his first company and was hired as an assistant at
LaMaja. The company had several branches in which his older brother and sister Antonio and Pepita were already working. Amancio was quickly promoted
to manager, and his place was taken by a 16-year-old girl named Rosalia Mera Goyenchea, whom he married two years later.

The owners of La Maja paid attention to the suggestions made by the young Ortega. One of them was the idea - to make clothes using factory fabric and the work of his brother Antonio's wife - a dressmaker. After some time, Ortega quit his job to concentrate on the clothing business.

“I decided to follow the impulse and founded GOA with my brother Antonio,” said Amancio. - We opened an account for 2,500 pesetas (less than 20 euros today). My half-sister, who knew how to sew, and my first wife, Rosalia, made the famous quilted robes, very fashionable at that time.

Then, in 1963, the family business was a small workshop. Then Amancio took up the purchase and subsequent export of clothing from other Spanish manufacturers. Ten years later, he had the idea to enter the retail market - in 1975 he opened the first Zara store in his native A Coruña.

International network

In 1979, Amancio merged all of his companies under the banner of Inditex. In the 80s, he filled all corners of Spain with his stores, and before the end of the decade he was seized by a brave and reckless idea - to conquer the fashion capitals
world, open in Paris and cross the Atlantic to conquer New York.

“When I arrived in Paris in 1990, shortly after opening our first store, next to the Place de l’Opéra, I rushed there to
see everything with your own eyes, - said Ortega. - When I tried to enter that first store in the French capital, I could not get through the line of people crowding even on the street. I stood there in the doorway, sobbing like a baby. I couldn't contain my feelings."

From the very beginning, the company has relied on fast fashion and the repetition of models of famous designers in more accessible materials. The Inditex office had a special department whose employees studied fashion magazines and also dissected dresses from the latest collections in order to borrow their cut for their models.

Knowing that a single brand would not satisfy all customers, Amancio decided not to settle for Zara, whose consumer audience was middle-class women and which generated 78 percent of revenue. In 1991, he created Pull & Bear, which presented casual wear for young people. He also bought a stake in Massimo Dutti, which is aimed at upper-middle-income clients of both sexes, and within five years he took full ownership of the brand.

In 1998, realizing that he needed to cover the needs of discotheque teenagers as well, he created Bershka for girls who didn't want to dress like their mothers or older sisters, and the following year bought Stradivarius to complement Bershka, thus gaining control of two major brands in the teen market. In the 2000s, the group also developed the Uterqüe accessories brand.

Business model

The first step in the process of creating a new collection is identifying trends. Employees of the company travel all over the world, look at what people are wearing and how customers are dressed on the street. Their observations can turn into sketches, which are then shown at internal meetings. Designers look at dominant colors and materials and then study specific elements in detail. In addition, they draw information from fashion magazines, runway shows, TV shows or stars' red carpet outfits, and so on. Brand stores also report what is now in demand.

With all this information in hand, designers create line prototypes (more than 22,000 items a year). Prototypes are tested on real people and mannequins. Things that pass the test are given back to the hands of fashion designers, who create patterns. Fragments of the pattern are placed on the fabric like a puzzle, trying to find the most profitable use of the material.

When marketing gives final approval for the production of a thing, requests are sent to various factories that offer their prices and deadlines for a specific job. The one who offers the closest to the ideal option gets the job. Inditex usually produces 25% of its collection before the start of the season. This reduces warehouse costs and avoids the risk of not meeting customer requirements.

“We have the ability to completely abandon a line if it doesn’t sell, we can fill the collections with new colors and create a new style in just a few days,” Ortega said.

Ordinary sellers set high prices at the beginning of the season, and
then they cut margins for several months to sell the product. The consumer knows that at the end of the season, he or she will be able to buy items at lower prices. Ortega renews its line in stores around the world every week or twice a week in European stores. The clients know
that they will always find new products in the store, but they also know that they will definitely not find in the store what they tried on there seven days ago. Thanks to this, customers visit Inditex stores about 17 times a year, instead of the average 3.5 times in other clothing stores.

The store manager has full control of his territory, large or
small, with a staff of ten to 120 people. Many managers act as CEOs and their salaries reach up to 240,000 euros per year. These are the people who order from the catalog and inform the head office about what works and what doesn't.

The company has six fundamental rules governing communication with the client. These are known as the "master six":

Always work with a pleasant expression on your face;

Smile at the checkout;

Hold a pen in your hands;

The manager must be more interested in clients than others;

Fitting rooms are an important point in the sales process;

Throughout the store, patience is essential.

Now the number of Inditex stores that comply with these rules has exceeded 6,600. In 2001, the company placed its shares on the stock exchange, but Amancio retained a controlling stake. He is in fourth place on the Forbes list of billionaires with a net worth of $71.5 billion. The founder of the company does not like publicity and tries not to get into the camera lenses. At the same time, employees say that the huge wealth did not affect the character of Amancio.

“He didn't let anything change him,” says Elena Perez, manager of his first store in Madrid. - The company keeps growing and growing, but he wears the same shoes, shirts and trousers. I know he'd like to wear Zara more, but sometimes he gets really annoyed with our men's department because they don't have pants in his size."

Photos: Cover - Martin Good / Shutterstock.com, 1 - TORRECILLA / EPA / TASS, 2 - Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock.com, 3 - Wikipedia

And interior items.

The policy of the brand is to produce products that are affordable in price and at the same time correspond to the latest fashion trends. Zara is one of the best selling brands in the world according to CNN. There are currently over 640 brands in 47 countries.

The Zara brand is part of a corporation (Industria de Diseco Textil), which also owns the brands Pull and Bear, Oysho, Uterqüe, Massimo Dutti and Stradivarius. The owner of the group of companies is a businessman - a man ranked 7th in the ranking of the richest people in the world according to Forbes magazine (his fortune is estimated at $ 31 billion).

History of the Zara brand

The origin of the brand idea

Entrepreneur Amancio Ortega Gaona was born in 1936 in the Spanish village of Buzdongo de Arbas in the province of Leon. His father was a railroad worker and his mother was a housewife. At the age of 14, the future entrepreneur left school and got a job as a messenger in a men's shirt shop, and then as a salesman in the La Maja dry goods store, where his brother, sister and a girl named Rosalia Mera, who later became his wife, worked.

Four years later, Amancio Ortega Gaona opened his own business: initially he kept wholesale warehouses. At that time, he came up with the idea of ​​​​producing and distributing children's bathrobes directly, which would ensure low prices for products. Together with his wife, the entrepreneur began to sew them in his own living room. Then Amancio Ortega copied underwear from the famous expensive brand, which marked the beginning of the Zara brand policy.

Opening of the first store

May 15, 1975 in the city of A Coruña, Amancio Ortega opened his first store. It presented clothes copied from the products of leading fashion houses at relatively low prices.

Creation of a unique organizational system

Within four years of opening the first store, a network of boutiques was created throughout Spain. Amancio Ortega developed a unique system of production, warehousing and sales, which made it possible to sell products at affordable prices while maintaining their high quality. The system he developed was so innovative that it was subsequently studied by specialists at Harvard.

Development of a network of boutiques

In 1988, Amancio Ortega opened stores in Portugal, in 1989 in the USA, and in 1990 in France. By the 1990s, Zara had become the fastest growing fashion chain in the world. with an annual growth rate of 30-40%. Currently, Zara boutiques are represented in Spain, Russia, USA, France, Italy, Great Britain, Ukraine, Mexico, Greece and the Middle East. In 2010, a rebranding was carried out, which marked the company's desire to continue to actively move forward.

Change of chairman of the board of Inditex Group

V In January 2011, Amancio Ortega Gaone stepped down as chairman of the board of the Inditex group of companies. He retains 59.2% of the organization's shares, and 87% of his fortune is still a stake in the company. In the future, his stake should go to his eldest daughter Marta, who since 2007 has been in the management of funds that manage the assets of the Ortega family. Currently, the chairman of the board is the former vice president of the company, Pablo Isla, who has worked in the Inditex Group since 2005 and in five years brought the corporation's brands to Asia, and also opened the Zara online store.

Work principles

Democratic prices

Clothing brand Zara is in the middle price category. Saving on the cost of the final product, while maintaining the quality of the tailoring of the company, allows the absence of own brand shows.

The principle of "instant fashion"

The brand applies the so-called fast design principle, when a minimum amount of time (about 15 days) passes from the development of a new collection to its presentation in stores. The creative team of the company, consisting of more than 200 specialists, uses trends from the world to create new collections. A noticeable resemblance to clothing largely ensures the success of the brand. The conceptual policy of the brand is to combine classic and youth styles in its models.

Frequent collection updates

Zara clothing is made in small batches using industrial and home-based production. Currently, the Zara brand cooperates with 30 manufacturers of materials and accessories. The assortment of collections (more than 10 thousand models per year) in branded boutiques is replenished twice a week. The fast deliveries characteristic of the brand ensured the emergence of a new term "Z-day" in the clothing market.

Franchising

The Zara brand network operates on a franchising system. In the regions, the company's representatives have master franchises that allow them to control the number of boutiques on their territory at their own discretion. In Russia, 36 stores have opened in 10 years, and now franchising has been temporarily suspended. In this regard, the brand ZaraZara appeared in our country, which follows the concept and style of the brand.

Brand lines

Official site: www.zara.com

Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega is the richest man in the world. The owner of Inditex, which combines the brands Zara, Pull & Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho and others, is now worth about $ 72 billion. The Secret found out what rules Ortega followed in order to accumulate such a fortune.

Money shouldn't be the goal

Ortega comes from a poor family: his father is a railway worker, and his mother is a maid, there was barely enough money for the bare necessities. Once, when he was 12 years old, he went to the grocery store with his mother, but had to leave empty-handed. He heard the seller say, "Josefa, I'm sorry, but I can no longer sell you goods on credit." This angered Ortega, and he decided that he didn't want his mother to ever hear something like that again. Soon he left school and got a job as an assistant in a sewing workshop.

And yet, according to the founder of Zara, money is not the most important thing for him, it is more important to be able to set goals and do everything to achieve them. “Doing business just for money is a waste of time. When you earn as much as we do, it is obvious that we are unlikely to need more. For me, money has only one meaning. They are needed to achieve goals. And if you are successful, then it is useful to help those who depend on us so that their lives become better, ”says Ortega.

Photo: Jim Hollander/EPA

Find your niche

“From the time I started working, I was obsessed with one idea: why not invent something different from everything else on the market? I saw clearly that it was necessary to occupy the free space remaining in the world of the textile industry, ”said Amancio Ortega in an interview with the former editor-in-chief of the Spanish Telva magazine, Covadonga O'Shi.

In 1963, Ortega went into business for the first time, his wife joined him, and then his brother and his wife. They organized the production of bathrobes and cotton nightgowns: they sewed them by hand, creating models that looked like designer ones. “The fact that only rich ladies could dress well always seemed unfair to me,” Ortega said in 2003.

Later, representatives of Zara began to travel to fashion shows around the world and copied clothes. Ortega's company has been accused of plagiarism more than once, but Zara is confident that they do not copy, but capture fashion trends and use common ideas. So, in 2008, Zara unsuccessfully tried to sue French shoemaker Christian Louboutin - the luxury brand claimed that the retailer violated its trademark by using very high heels and red soles. The cost of Zara shoes then did not exceed $100, and a pair of Christian Louboutins often cost more than $1000.

Do everything quickly

For Amancio Ortega, speed has always been important: the speed of production, the speed of delivery and the speed of updating models. Ortega set a rule at Zara - the lineup in stores should be updated every two weeks, and delivery to warehouses should be carried out within 48 hours.

Offering customers varied and small quantities, Zara can always count on the fact that everything will be sold out. If some things are not in demand, they are quickly replaced by more popular ones. While customers visit other clothing stores on average four times a year, they visit Inditex stores almost 17 times a year.

Ortega allowed his clients to update their wardrobe regularly. Back in the 90s, journalists wrote that Ortega changed people's consumer habits: "We are already beginning to define Zara-mania in consumer habits: to acquire the most fashionable things in order to get rid of them with a pure heart next year."

Don't delegate

“If I want everything to continue to work, I must remain in my post,” Amancio Ortega is sure. Acquaintances describe him as a passionate worker, ready to spend even birthdays at the factory. A businessman likes to control everything in his company - from the search for ideas for new models to the behavior of sales assistants in his stores.

Ortega stepped down as president of Inditex in 2011 at the age of 75, but continues to make regular trips to Inditex's headquarters in the billionaire's home province of A Coruña. There, he most often sits at the table with designers, fabric experts and buyers of the Zara women's clothing line. Ten years ago, the businessman confessed that although he is fascinated by the entire production process, what he likes most of all is to look at the work of his artists.

Photo: Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Bloomberg via Getty Images

keep growing

The first Zara opened in 1975 in A Coruña, and in the 1980s, the chain's outlets were already all over Spain. However, this was not enough for Ortega - he wanted to conquer all the fashionable capitals. In 1988 he opened the first Zara store in Portugal, in 1989 in New York, and in 1990 in Paris. In Russia, the first Zara appeared in 2003. “Even when I was a nobody and had practically nothing, I dreamed of development and growth. We have never rested on our laurels or taken the easy way out. Optimism can be a very negative emotion. Need to take risks! Every day there are new ideas and we don't have any pre-set plans. Growth is a survival mechanism. Without growth, the company dies,” says Ortega.

By the mid-1980s, Ortega realized that one brand was not enough to satisfy all categories of the population - mainly middle-class women dressed in Zara. In 1991, he created Pull & Bear, a youth brand of inexpensive casual wear. Then he bought a stake in Massimo Dutti, which dresses upper-middle-income clients (now the brand is wholly owned by him). In 1998, Bershka appeared, offering clothes to young party girls, and in 1999, Ortega bought his main competitor in the teenage clothing market, the Stradivarius chain. Today Inditex is the largest group of companies in the clothing market, with more than 6,777 stores in 88 countries.

Sources: The Zara Phenomenon by Covadonga O'Shea, Bloomberg, Forbes Cover photo: Efa via EPA