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Amancio Ortega
Net Worth
 
$37.5 B As of March 2012
Follow (231)
At a Glance
* Age: 76
* Source of Wealth: Zara, Self-made
* Residence: La Coruna, Spain
* Country of Citizenship: Spain
* Marital Status: Married
* Children: 3
Forbes Lists
#5 Forbes Billionaires
* #1 in Spain

Ortega stepped down as chairman of his global fashion firm, Inditex, in July 2011. Thecompany hasn't missed a beat. Shares are up one-fourth in the past year, helping boost his fortune by $6.5 billion and pushing him into the global top 5 ranks for the first time. Ortega paid $536 million to billionaire Esther Koplowitz in December for Torre Picasso, a 43-story skyscraper in Madrid. He also owns Epic Residences & Hotel, a luxury 54-story waterfront condo and hotel developmentin Miami. Other personal holdings include a stake in a soccer league and a horse-jumping circuit. A railway worker's son, he started as a gofer in a shirt store. With then-wife Rosalia Mera, also a billionaire, he started making dressing gowns and lingerie in living room. His daughter Marta, who works for Inditex, married Spanish equestrian star Sergio Alvarez Moya in February.
■ Amancio Ortegawas the founder and chairman of the Spanish company Industria de Diseño Textil (Inditex), the parent company of a number of chain stores including the internationally successful clothing retailer Zara. Ortega came from humble beginnings to turn himself into Spain's richest man in 2001 when Inditex first offered shares to the public. Ortega acquired a reputation as a private and down-to-earthperson; he rarely made public appearances and shunned the trappings of the wealthy.
EARLY CAREER
The son of a railroad worker and a maid, Ortega received no formal higher education. He began his remarkable career as a teenager in La Coruña, Spain, the traditional center of the Iberian textile industry. When he was 13 years old he worked as a delivery boy for a shirtmaker who produced clothing for therich. He later worked as a draper's and tailor's assistant. In seeing firsthand how costs mounted as garments moved from designers to factories to stores, Ortega learned early on the importance of delivering products directly to customers without using outside distributors. He would later employ such a strategy with great success at Zara, attempting to control all of the steps in textileproduction in order to cut costs and gain speed and flexibility.
In the early 1960s Ortega became the manager of a local clothing shop, where he noticed that only a few wealthy residents could afford to buy the expensive clothes. Thus he started producing similar items at lower prices, purchasing cheaper fabric in Barcelona and cutting out pieces by hand using cardboard patterns. Ortega then sold hisitems to local shops; he used the profits to start his first factory in 1963 at the age of 27.
THE ZARA PHENOMENON
In 1975 Ortega opened his first Zara shop across the street from La Coruña's most important department store; he would become renowned for choosing the best locations for his outlets. Zara was soon reputed for selling quality designer fashions at reasonable prices. The formula had beenused successfully by Gap in the United States and Next in Great Britain but was entirely new in Spain; the large Corte Inglés and Cortefiel had controlled the midrange clothing market, but neither appealed to youthful fashion sense. The company's first annual report, which would be produced in 1999, outlined Ortega's goal, stating, "Zara's aim was to democratize fashion. In contrast to the idea offashion as a privilege, we offer accessible fashion that reaches the high street, inspired by the taste, desires, and lifestyle of modern men and women" (Nash, October 27, 1999). By 1989 Ortega had opened nearly one hundred stores in Spain.
Zara became so successful that advertisement was almost never necessary, as word of mouth sufficiently maintained sales; the chain especially depended on...