In addition to industry-leading design-to-store turnaround speed, another strategy of Ortega’s that sets Inditex apart from competitors is its minuscule advertising spending. Fast fashion—the massively successful business model that Ortega had first developed in the 1960s—was off and running. 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.

From Manufacturing to Retail: The First Zara Store (

As he advanced through the ranks over the ensuing 14 years, becoming Assistant Manager and Shop Manager, he gained firsthand knowledge of interacting with clients as well as buying fabrics and other supplies to make clothing. Amancio Ortega was born in a tiny town in northern Spain in 1936, just as the Spanish Civil War was beginning, and his family later relocated to Galicia in northwest Spain. His mother worked as a maid, his father was an itinerant railway worker, and the family resided in a row home next to the tracks.

Inditex SA

Their daughter has an estimated $9.7 billion net worth and  controls 4.5% of Inditex, though she’s not involved in the company. She’s the second-richest person in Spain behind her father, according to Forbes. According to the only authorized biography of Ortega, his lifelong drive for success was triggered by a traumatic incident that happened shortly after the family arrived in their new town. One evening, as he was walking home with his mother, he witnessed her pleading for credit to buy groceries and coming out of the store empty-handed because the store owner refused.

The fast-fashion brand is investing in new ways to engage shoppers as analysts expect sales growth to slow after a post-pandemic surge. Reuters reported that Ortega held around $6.6 billion in real estate assets by the end of 2015. Ortega picked up another New York property in 2016, this time a hotel at 70 Park Avenue in Murray Hill for $67.6 million, according to The Real Deal. Since Inditex’s initial public offering in 2001, Ortega has received more than 12 billion owner of zara brand 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.

In Madrid, the Worlds of Fast-Fashion and High Fashion Battle Things Out on The Same Runway

The only official biography of Amancio Ortega claims that a terrible event that occurred soon after the family moved to their new town served as the catalyst for his lifelong ambition for success. He was planning to name it Zorba after the film “Zorba the Greek,” but there was already a local bar with the same name. Because he’d already bought molds of the letters Z-O-R-B-A, he made do with what he had and ended up with the name Zara, Vogue India reported.

In 1985, as Ortega was preparing to launch the Zara brand internationally, Inditex was officially incorporated as the parent company for Zara. The first Zara store outside of Spain opened in Portugal in 1988, followed quickly by New York (1989); Paris (1990); Mexico City (1992); Athens (1993); Belgium and Sweden (1994); Malta (1995); Cypriot (1996); Norway and Israel (1997). After launching their first company, Confecciones GOA (his initials reversed), in 1963, Ortega and Rosalia Mera spent the next decade expanding their client base and building their production capacity. Within 10 years, their business had grown so rapidly that GOA had 500 employees. A key driver of GOA’s growth throughout these early years was that Ortega eliminated middlemen and controlled manufacturing and the supply chain by organizing thousands of women into sewing cooperatives and trucking in textiles from Barcelona.

At the same time, H&M has had to close some stores as many customers take their purchases online, reflecting the broader transition in the retail world from physical sales to a more e-commerce-based model. 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. Zara’s success comes from its quick-response production model, which allows the brand to capture and react to changing fashion trends efficiently.

1. Together, they manage 21 stores, providing a premium fashion experience in the country.
2. In 1985, as Ortega was preparing to launch the Zara brand internationally, Inditex was officially incorporated as the parent company for Zara.
3. “Now we believe that the time has come to turn a new page, with Marta Ortega as chair and Óscar García Maceiras as chief executive officer, whose appointment was already foreseen since his incorporation into the company due to his abilities and qualities.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Company Snapshot

Sweden-based H&M is both the largest and the oldest, with nearly 4,000 stores worldwide. Japan-based Uniqlo and Spain’s Zara have their own product lines, as well as loyal customer bases. Zara is able to design, manufacture, and sell its products in stores quickly because the company owns many of the vertical factors of production. Zara’s main manufacturing plant is in the city of La Coruña, where the clothing retailer was founded. Of all of the products that Zara manufactures, about 50% of production facilities are in Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and Morocco. Pioneering the fast fashion movement in the mid-70s with the launch of Zara, Ortega’s innovative retail strategy — rapid response to trends and consumer demand — has turned Zara into a global retailer boasting over 1,700 individual storefronts in 86 countries.

1. Zara divides the products sold within its stores into lower garments and upper garments, with price points being higher for the upper garments.
2. For example, once each Zara store was linked to the factory system, not only was all sales information automatically sent back to headquarters in Spain, but the on-site staff also constantly monitored the stock.
3. Ortega was the 25th richest person in the world as of April 12, 2022, with a net worth of $46.9 billion.
4. Post-WWII manufacturing used low-wage workers from underdeveloped countries.
5. Inditex pledged for all of its head offices to acquire green building certifications and for all of its stores to be more ecologically efficient, utilizing 80% renewable energy.

Uniqlo’s distribution strategy has centered on the timing of its products’ introductions into stores, with new products created as a function not of quantity, but of demand. These three clothing distributors have differing approaches to their ownership of materials, sourcing of manufacturing, and treatment of auxiliary brands. Here’s a look at each company, what their focus is, who their customers are, and how they have developed their brands over the years. Through the Pontegadea company, he brings together all his assets based on real estate investment and financial investments.

Trent Limited has a local supply chain which delivers unique styles to customers in as fast as 12 days. Trent Limited also uses Zara-inspired tricks, like holding fabric stock itself, to reduce the time it takes to get products from designer’s sketches to stores. Rather than cutting costs by outsourcing to China and waiting months for delivery like their competitors, Inditex drives profit by selling at full price and rarely getting stuck with unwanted stock. Even when Zara began to expand internationally in the 1990s, Ortega kept most of the production local, which gave the company ownership of a short supply chain—another secret of Inditex’s exceptionally rapid design-production-delivery turnaround time. In 2022, 49% of the factories supplying Inditex were still located fairly close to corporate headquarters, either in Spain or Portugal, Turkey, or Morocco.

Zara is a forward-thinking force in fashion; embodying what is possible when responsibility and aspiration are accessible to all. By bringing more thoughtful style to the world, we aim to provide everyone, no matter where they are, with the inspiringly beautiful, always on-trend, responsibly crafted fashion they deserve. He was planning to name it Zorba after the film Zorba the Greek, but there was already a local bar with the same name. Because he’d already bought moulds of the letters Z-O-R-B-A, he made do with what he had and ended up with the name Zara. Jeff Bezos sold about $1 billion in company stock as part of a planned divestiture, a month after he said he spends about that amount annually on his space exploration company Blue Origin. Ortega began working as an assistant to a high-end shirtmaker in his birthplace of La Corua in 1949 when he was just 13 years old.

Zara’s ownership of its supply-chain steps allows for more rapid product turnover; Zara can design a product and have it sold in stores a month later. The discount retailer, known for its affordable prices, was founded in Sweden in 1947 and has, over the years, grown into one of the most recognizable brands in the fashion industry. With consumers tightening their belts in China, the battle between global fast fashion brands and local high street giants has intensified. Cotton linked to environmental and human rights abuses in Brazil is leaking into the supply chains of major fashion brands, a new investigation has found, prompting Zara-owner Inditex to send a scathing rebuke to the industry’s biggest sustainable cotton certifier. BoF gains rare access to Inditex — the world’s largest fashion retailer and parent company of Zara — to understand how the business is addressing the vast environmental impact of its operations.