Amancio Ortega, the third richest man in the world

Hi there!

I am new in this blog and I want to start my contribution talking about a very relevant person from my city who had and has an important impact there. His name is Amancio Ortega and he is the co-founder of Inditex Group, which more famous brand is ZARA.

AMANCIO ORTEGA GAONA

Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish businessman known for be the owner and founder of the textile imperium ZARA. He is the world’s richest retailer man and the third richest man in the world with a fortune estimated of $65,3 bn.

Amancio Ortega was born in Spain in a very humble family, his father was a railway worker and he started to work at the age of 14 to help economically his family.

He got married twice and has three children, one son and one daughter of his first marriage and one daughter with his currently wife.

His son was born with cerebral paralyse, for that reason he and Rosalia Mera (his first wife) created “Paideia Foundation” with the aim to help people with disability.

 Amancio and Rosalia were co-workers in a shirt’s store in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain) and decided to start a new business in the living room of their house with the help of Amancio’s brothers. This company produced and sold quilted bathrobes at low prices to be affordable to everybody.

In 1975 they expanded the business to men, women and kids clothes and opened the first Zara store in A Coruña, Spain.  After that, they started to open stores all over Spain and in all Europe.

Their philosophy is to be the designers, manufactures, delivers and sellers.

In the 90’s the company started to create new brands and they made Inditex Group which collect all the brands of the company such as Oysho, Pull&Bear, Zara Home, Stradivarius…

In 2011 he announced his retirement as Inditex CEO but he still owns aroun 60% of its shares.

Besides Inditex Group, he has wide real estate properties, for example Torre Picaso (Madrid) which is rented to Google and around 26 buildings in the most important cities in the world such as New York and London.

In 2001 Amancio Ortega Foundation is made, it is a non-profit organization which promotes activities in the cultural, educational and investigational fields.

Amancio Ortega has a very private life; he lives with his wife and daughter in A Coruña, in a normal house close to the headquarters of the company.

He eats in the company’s cafeteria with his employees every day and always goes to the same coffee shop. He works in the design department because he doesn’t want to have a private office and takes a very active part in the production and design process.

He always wear casual clothes and none of them are Zara clothes!

He has only granted three interviews ever and he doesn’t like to do public appearances. His employees say that he is a very competitive person, perfectionist and observant.

 I hope you enjoy knowing more about the life of this business man, who is studied in the Business Universities all over the world and he couldn't go to any one.