Meet Amancio Ortega, the fiercely private Zara founder who built a $77 billion fast-fashion empire
Amancio Ortega in 2017.
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Amancio Ortega, the 86-year-old Spanish founder of clothing retailer Zara, is worth around $54 billion.
Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, the world's largest clothing retailer. Besides Zara, he owns Pull&Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, among others.
Here's how he got his start, built a fast-fashion empire, and became one of the world's wealthiest moguls.
The 86-year-old Ortega was born in northwestern Spain in 1936, the son of a railroad worker and a stay-at-home mother.
He started making clothes with his siblings and future wife, Rosalia Mera, in their home in the early 1960s. In 1975, Ortega and Mera opened the first Zara store in downtown La Coruna, Spain.
A Zara store in La Coruna, Spain, in 2012.
"Zara" wasn't his first choice for the store's name. 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.
Shoppers walked by a closed Zara store at a Moscow shopping mall on March 26, 2022.
Ten years later, in 1985, Ortega incorporated Zara into a holding company called Inditex. He and Mera separated around that time, but she remained the company's second-largest shareholder.
Inditex headquarters in La Coruna, Spain, in 2012.
Ortega owns 59% of Inditex, which is now the world's largest clothing retailer. Inditex owns a portfolio of fast-fashion brands, including Zara, one of the best-known and most successful fashion brands in the world with nearly 3,000 stores in 96 countries ...
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... Bershka, which is the second-largest chain by store count in Inditex's entire operation, with its sales representing 9% of the total revenue for the group ...
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Inditex has grown into a fast-fashion behemoth. The company reported 27.7 billion euros in revenue – $29.1 billion at current exchange rates – during the 2021 fiscal year and online sales surged, nudging the company closer to becoming one of the world's largest e-commerce sellers.
Mera and Ortega's daughter, Sandra Ortega Mera, inherited the title of Spain's richest woman after her mother's death.
Sandra Ortega Mera at her mother's funeral on August 17, 2013, in Oleiros, Spain.
Worth an estimated $6.67 billion, Ortega Mera controls 5% of Inditex, though she's not involved in the company.
Sandra Ortega Mera and her husband at her mother's funeral.
Ortega and Perez share two children, including a daughter, Marta, who manages fashion merchandise at Zara.
Marta Ortega at Paris Fashion Week in January 2019.
She married top Spanish equestrian Sergio Álvarez Moya in February 2012, but the couple separated in 2015.
Sergio Álvarez Moya and Marta Ortega the night before their wedding in February 2012.
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In November 2018, Marta married Carlos Torretta,— then a modeling agent and son of designer Roberto Torrettain — at her family's home in Galicia, Spain. Spanish publications called the ceremony, which reportedly included a socialite-studded guest list, the "wedding of the year."
Carlos Torretta and Marta Ortega at their wedding pre-party in November 2018.
Marta Ortega was long considered a favorite to follow in her father's footsteps and lead Inditex. He stepped down as Inditex's chairman in 2011 and handed the reins to executive president Pablo Isla, but in 2022, Marta Ortega took over as Inditex's chairwoman.
Amancio and Marta Ortega.
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Since Inditex's initial public offering in 2001, Ortega has received more than 9 billion euros, or about $10 billion, in dividends, according to Bloomberg.
Most of his cash has been reinvested in real estate through his company's investment arm, Pontegadea. In 2011, he bought the tallest skyscraper in Spain, the 515-foot Torre Picasso in Madrid, for $536 million.
Ortega picked up another New York property in 2016, this time a hotel at 70 Park Avenue in Murray Hill for $67.6 million.
A subway platform in New York's Murray Hill neighborhood.
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In 2019, Ortega went on a real estate spending spree, acquiring a downtown Chicago hotel for $72.5 million, as well as a building in central Washington D.C. and two office buildings in Seattle that Amazon had leased, for a combined $1.1 billion.
The exterior of the Amazon office buildings in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood.
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, but it's unclear whether Ortega still owns it.
Ortega is known for being low-key, as executives go. Bloomberg reported in 2012 that he eschewed an office to sit among the designers and fabric experts at Zara's headquarters, while another report said he typically ate lunch with his employees in the company cafeteria every day.
The Zara factory in La Coruna, Spain, in 2005.
In his free time, Ortega is often seen at equestrian events. He also built an equestrian center near La Coruna, as his daughter Marta competes in show jumping.
Marta Ortega and Amancio Ortega at a horse jumping competition in Spain in 2013.
Ortega founded the Amancio Ortega Foundation in 2001, a charitable organization focused on education and social welfare. In 2017, the foundation donated $344 million to Spanish public hospitals to provide the latest technology in breast cancer screening and treatment.
In 2020, Ortega donated roughly $68 million to help combat the pandemic, including buying ventilators, face masks, and COVID tests for the Spanish Health System.
Despite running a major fashion retailer for four decades, Ortega is intensely private — there were no public photographs of him until 1999, and in 2012, Bloomberg noted that he had only ever granted interviews to three journalists. One Zara employee who worked with him told The Economist in 2016 that "the true story of Amancio Ortega has not been told."
Amancio Ortega in 2013.
Ashley Lutz, Mallory Schlossberg, and Melissa Wiley contributed to an earlier version of this story.
Correction: March 27, 2023 – An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of money that Amancio Ortega donated to combat the pandemic. He donated roughly $68 million.
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