Zara network owner. The founder of Zara became the richest man in the world. Zara brand collections

This year, on all continents, an unusually warm autumn has stood out, which made everyone happy, except for clothing stores, where the autumn collection remained untouched by customers. Most of the fashion retail chains suffered losses, but not Zara - this company was rescued by the "instant fashion" system.

Probably everyone knows the Zara brand. Network stores, like McDonald's, have spread all over the world and are located on the main streets of the largest cities in all corners of the planet. With over 2,000 stores on every continent, Zara is one of the largest clothing retailers in the world.

In a few years of overwhelming success, Zara has become the largest textile concern Inditex, which includes the brands Zara, Pull and Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Uterqüe and the Tempe shoe division.

In total, the Inditex concern has 6,460 outlets around the world, employing more than 120,000 people.

"Instant Fashion"

Zara has revolutionized the fashion world and the textile industry, giving birth to the very concept of "instant fashion". What is it and what is the uniqueness of such a business scheme?

In most textile companies, the production cycle of clothes takes about 8 months - this period includes design development, fabric search, fabric dyeing, sewing a model, receipt of a collection in a store. And at Zara, this process takes just 2 weeks. Inditex has its own design team of around 400 professionals. They create inexpensive clothing designs based on the latest high fashion trends in a very short time. Such a system allows you to quickly update the entire range of stores, quickly remove unpopular models from production and refine the design of existing ones at the request of consumers.

Thus, Zara always keeps abreast of fashion, one of the first to respond to new trends and customer wishes. Customers are looking forward to the days of new deliveries to stores - "Day-Z". It happens that clothes are swept off the shelves in a few hours, and the updated collection is sold out completely. No wonder the fashion director of fashion house Louis Vuitton Daniel Piet described Zara as "perhaps the most innovative and crushing retail chain in the world."

All retailers in the world dream of such annual attendance as Zara. For example, the average store in Spain, located on one of the central streets of the city, expects to see one customer 3 times a year, and for Zara this figure is 17 times a year!

Inditex is one of the few companies that has resisted the temptation to move all its clothing production to countries with cheap labor. Less than a quarter - 24% of production - is made in China, Morocco, Bangladesh and Turkey. The rest of the products are produced in the north of Spain and Portugal.

But, wherever a thing is produced, each item of the Inditex range passes through Spain. Designers and experts at the company's main studio in Arteijo (Galicia) first check the quality of products, and only then send the goods to the entire retail network, including China.

A similar system applies to the installation of shops and showcases of the brand. All materials go through the main office.
Of course, this requires a large staff - 6,000 people from 30 countries work in the studio, factory and warehouses in Arteiho.

Business development

The secret of Inditex's success is fast response and smooth communication between designers, factories and store managers.

In fact, the store manager, who sends reports to Inditex headquarters twice a week based on sales data and customer surveys, is a key figure in a successful business scheme. That is why Inditex managers receive a much higher salary than their competitors, as well as large bonuses at the end of the month.

Zara stores have not needed advertising for a long time, so the money saved on promotion is invested in the opening of new outlets and in the development of projects and brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius and Bershka.

While main competitor H&M runs expensive advertising campaigns, Zara prefers to invest in high-quality and expensive shop windows that can even be compared with those of luxury brands such as Dior and Prada.

However, Zara has a somewhat dismissive attitude not only towards advertising, but also towards journalists. It was far from the first attempt to get comments from Zara representatives - several times, to inquiries and calls from the editorial office to the company's main office, public relations representatives replied that Inditex's corporate policy did not allow comments. However, especially for New Retail, Zara experts nevertheless reported several important facts.

According to representatives of Inditex, in the nine months of 2014 (from February to October), retail sales, including the turnover of the Zara online store, increased by 10.5%. And in the period from November 1 to December 8, sales growth was 14%.

As for business in Russia, according to Inditex CEO Pablo Isla, it is developing properly, and the company does not plan significant changes in the market development strategy.

Regarding the recent closure of the Zara flagship store on Tverskaya, representatives of the fashion brand note that "its commercial activity has been absorbed by the activity of other Zara stores nearby." However, as previously reported by the media, Zara representatives did not come to an agreement with tenants on a new amount for rent on Tverskaya Street.

At the origins of the brand

The history of the world brand began, as it often happens, from the desire of one simple, poor person, gifted with willpower, patience, organizational skills, to get ahead and offer the world something new.

Today, the founder of the network, Amancio Ortega Gaona, the wealthiest man in Spain, is in fourth place in the list of the richest people on the planet with a capital of 64 billion dollars.

Gaona was born in the small town of the Spanish province of Lyon in the family of a railway worker and a servant. Due to poverty, Amancio could not even finish high school and from the age of 13 worked as a courier in a shirt shop. Then, in 1950, he was hired by the haberdashery La Maja, where his brother Antonio, sister Pepita and Rosalia Mera, who would later become his first wife, were already working.

At the age of fourteen, Amancio followed his family to La Coruña in the province of Galicia, where he became an apprentice with an Italian fashion designer. The owner of the atelier once said to the father of the future fashion magnate: “You know, a tailor will not work out of him, a tailor should be easy, sociable.” The owner of the atelier was right, and so in the 1960s, Amancio became a manager in one of the stores.

In 1972, at the age of 37, Amancio opened his own knitwear factory. At first, together with his first wife Rosalia Mera, he sewed bathrobes, nightgowns and lingerie right in the living room of his own house.

Rosalia Mera, first wife of Amancio Ortega Gaona

In 1975, the couple opened their own shop on one of the central streets of A Coruña to save their business after a German customer canceled an order for a large batch of linen, in which Amansi invested all his free capital. The store was originally named Zorba after their favorite character Anthony Quinn from the movie Zorba the Greek, however, due to registration issues, the store had to be renamed Zara.

Amancio Ortega realized before the Chinese that it was possible to make copies of the best models of clothes from famous couturiers, and sell them several times cheaper. The idea proved successful, and Zara stores opened at an incredible rate throughout Spain.

In the 80s, José Maria Castellano joined the Ortega team, with whom Gaona came up with an innovative “instant fashion” business system, an obligatory component of which was his own design studio. The studio was named Industria de Diseño Textil S.A., or Inditex.

Inditex head office in Galicia (Spain)

In 1988, the first Zara store was opened abroad - it was a store in Porto (Portugal). And then began the conquest of the United States, France and - gradually - the whole world.

If the business went uphill and Inditex in a short time caught up and overtook its main competitors, including H&M, in terms of production and income, then the family affairs of the creator of Zara did not go well.

In 1985, Amancio Ortega divorced his first wife, Rosalia Mera, who went through the first and most difficult years of the business with him. From this marriage there were two children - Sandra and Marcos. The latter, unfortunately, was born with a severe form of disability.

Marta Ortega Perez, youngest daughter of Amancio Ortega Gaon

Rosalia has a 7% stake in Inditex after the divorce. She died in mid-August 2013 at the age of 69 from a stroke, her fortune passed to her daughter, Sandra Ortega Mera, who is now considered one of the richest women in Spain.
After the divorce, the founder of Zara brought fate to his assistant Flores Perez Marcote, with whom they still live in perfect harmony. The couple have a daughter, Marta Ortega Perez, who works for her father's company. She is responsible for the youth brand Bershka, part of Inditex.

A few years ago, 78-year-old Amancio Ortega left the chairmanship of Inditex, handing over the reins to the younger generation.

Amancio Ortega lives in a rather modest mansion for one of the richest people in the world in A Coruña in northern Spain, where he opened the first Zara store many years ago. The billionaire leads an extremely closed life, not wanting to communicate not only with journalists, but even with the King of Spain, Philip, who repeatedly invited him to royal receptions.

They say that the creator of “instant fashion” still likes to come to lunch at the main office of Inditex, apparently in order to once again be amazed at how large his brainchild has grown and continues to grow.

Daria Tkacheva was interested in the history of the brand

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 experts 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

IN 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

The founder of the Zara chain of stores, the Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega, became the richest man, displacing founder Bill Gates from the first line. Ortega's fortune in the World Billionaires Ranking, whose data is updated in real time, amounted to $79.7 billion. Over the past day, the fortune of the Spanish businessman has grown by 5.2%, or by $3.9 billion.

Amancio Ortega

The Forbes real-time world ranking of billionaires differs from the magazine's annual rankings by daily updates on the financial position of the world's richest people based on the value of shares and other securities owned by businessmen. The agency has a similar real-time rating. However, according to the Bloomberg Billioners Index, the Microsoft founder is almost $10 billion richer than the Spanish businessman. So, as of October 22, Bill Gates' fortune is estimated at $83.8 billion, while Ortega ranks second with $75.7 billion.

Amancio Ortega owns Inditex, which has over 6,750 stores in 88 countries and owns well-known brands like Zara, Oysho, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull and Bear, Zara Home, Stradivarius and Uterque. Ortega's brands focus on the middle class and do not try to conquer the luxury clothing market. This strategy is paying off: luxury goods manufacturers are now going through hard times, as the performance of the largest market players is affected by the economic situation in China, namely, slowing demand in China and Hong Kong.

In the first half of the year, the income of the Italian retailer Prada in the Asian region, which accounts for 36% of all sales, decreased by 1.4% in local currency and by 17.5% in terms of constant courses currencies. In mainland China, this figure fell by 1.2 and 19.3%, respectively, reported.

LVMH CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony said that the summer collapse of Chinese stock markets will also affect LVMH (the group's financials are due next week), although, in his opinion, the market will feel a decrease in demand "only for a few months."

At the same time, the world's largest luxury goods maker said that Chinese travelers' spending growth has slowed in recent months. “We are seeing more and more tourists from China, but they are spending a little less. The growth rate of purchases in the third quarter is not as high as it was in the first half of the year, ”Ghioni quotes. This situation comes against the backdrop of a weaker euro, due to which Asian travelers staged mass shopping tours at the beginning of the year.

However, the fall in demand for luxury goods so far affects the British Burberry Group Plc the most, as up to 40% of its profits come from purchases from Chinese consumers.

During the first half of the year, sales in the Chinese and Hong Kong stores of the fashion house fell by 5 and 20%, respectively.

Another factor that also negatively affected the company's performance was their focus on the domestic, English market, which accounts for about 40% of European sales. Many "dollar" buyers take advantage of the weakening of the European currency and come to make purchases on the continent, draws the attention of MainFirst Bank AG.

The company has said it could return to a 5% increase in like-for-like sales in the second half of the fiscal year, which runs through March 2016. However, according to Reuters, whether the second quarter was unsuccessful for the company due to external reasons, or whether the decline in performance could become a trend is still unclear.

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 the 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 next year with a pure heart."

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

There is hardly another mass-market brand like Zara, which reacts so accurately and quickly to trends from the catwalks. For example, when “ugly” shoes came into fashion a few seasons ago, the Spanish brand immediately introduced its own version of “birkenstocks”. And so it is with all the latest trends, whether it be velvet, faux fur or granny chair print. For this, frankly speaking, we love Zara - who else will give us the opportunity to replenish our wardrobe with the most desired new items for reasonable money? But do we know everything about this brand? StyleNews has collected 15 facts that you might not even know about.

The first Zara store in A Coruña, Spain, 1982

1. The first Zara store was opened in 1975 in the city of La Coruña in Spain and is still open today.

2. In the first collections of the brand, models-copies of the collections of famous fashion houses were presented.

3. As of October 2015, 86 Zara stores were opened in Russia out of 2.1 thousand in total in the world.

4. Brand founder Amancio Ortega never gives interviews. In 2015, he became the richest businessman in the world according to Forbes. The entrepreneur surpassed Bill Gates himself, the founder of Microsoft, on the list.

5. Ortega wanted to name his creation Zorba, after Anthony Quinn's character in Zorba the Greek. But it was not possible to obtain the rights to use this name and the idea had to be abandoned.

Frame from the film Zorba the Greek, 1964

6. The company employs more than 200 designers who develop men's, women's and children's clothing lines.

7. Zara produces an average of 11,000 items per year. In comparison, competing brands do not exceed 4,000 items.

8. If any model does not sell well, it is immediately withdrawn from sale, all orders for production are canceled, and another design is urgently developed.

9. All models of the brand are in stores for no longer than four weeks. Thus, marketers push customers to visit the store more often.

10. The entire cycle of production of Zara clothes and shoes - from tailoring to appearance on the shelves takes no more than two weeks.

11. Zara produces its most fashionable models at its own factories in Spain and Portugal. But the base lines are made in Turkey and Asian countries.

12. In 2007, a scandal erupted around Zara. The fault was one of the models of bags, on which some customers saw a hint of a swastika. The story was hushed up, and the bags were urgently taken out of production.

13. Another bad story for the brand happened in August 2014. The design of the T-shirts was strongly reminiscent of the robes of Jews imprisoned in concentration camps: stripes and a yellow star, similar in appearance to the Star of David. Despite the explanations of the company representatives that the designers were inspired by the uniforms of the sheriffs from classic westerns, the scandalous models were withdrawn from all stores in a few hours. The brand has apologized.

14. The first Zara online store was opened on November 4, 2010 and for the first time functioned only in Spain.

15. The main philosophy of the company, which allows to ensure low prices, is the use of fabrics costing less than $ 5 per meter.

16. "Zara does not need advertising" - another company motto that answers the question why you will never see Zara advertising posters on the streets and on the Internet. To ensure attendance, the company opens new outlets near the luxury stores of well-known brands.

17. Even Kate Middleton wears brand clothes.

Kate Middleton and Prince Charles

18. At the end of 2013, the Zara brand went completely toxic-free and signed Greenpeace's 2020 zero-emission commitment.

19. Zara stores are open in 88 countries, 55 of them in the US.

20. Spanish tycoon Amancio Ortega also owns brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Oysho, Zara Home, Uterqüe, Stradivarius, Lefties and Bershka.