When Marta Ortega got a job at a Bershka store 15 years ago, few knew that this saleswoman was the daughter of the owner of the fast fashion empire, Inditex. Today, she is taking over the reins of a fashion giant that started from a small shop in La Coruna, Spain, but ended up being worth over $ 100 billion.
Her father, Amancio Ortega, who on this journey managed to become the third richest man in Europe, with a fortune of 71 billion dollars, initially intended to give that store the name “Zorba” (from his favorite movie, the «Zorba the Greek»). But when he saw that a nearby bar had the same name, he had to change his plans. Having already ordered the letters for the sign, he decided to find an alternative name under which he would use at least some of them. And so, Zara was born.
“I always said I would dedicate my life to building on my parents’ legacy,” said Marta Ortega, 37, when it was announced she would take over the presidency of Inditex, replacing Pablo Isla, who has held the post since 2011.
“I have lived and breathed this company since I was a child and I have learned from all the great professionals I have worked with for the last 15 years,” he said.
The birth of a giant
Amancio Ortega was 13 when he started working for a local La Coruna tailor to supplement the income his father, who worked on the railways, brought home. By 1963, at the age of 27, he now had his own textile company and soon, together with his then wife Rosalia Mera, they expanded into clothing, selling mostly warm robes, in a city that receives the cold air of the Atlantic Ocean.
The women of La Coruna were thrilled and the fashionable lingerie designed by Mera was amazing. The first Zara store opened its doors in 1975.
What Ortega did in the following years was to create the fast fashion industry. Zara’s famous system includes nine factories and nine distribution centers in Spain, one distribution center in the Netherlands and 2,000 suppliers in Morocco, Turkey, India and China.
Zara’s “fashion machine” takes the trends of the time, the preferences of shoppers, the clothes that celebrities wear when photographed on the street, and sends them to the shelves of its stores in a short time. The company’s strategy is to keep stocks low and production times short. Competitors such as H&M and Topshop are struggling to reach the breadth and depth of her collections, as Zara sells over 450 million different items a year, and that, only in the female part. Twice a week, new products appear in its stores and online shop, giving the buyer the impression that if he does not move quickly to catch something he liked, he will not find it again.
The result is that today, Zara has a presence in 96 countries, with many of its 1,854 stores side by side with luxury names such as Dior, Louis Vuitton and Chanel.
The boss
Ortega himself is now 85 years old and although he has officially retired, he still goes to work at Inditex headquarters in La Coruna almost every day.
Although at home and at work he is called “the boss”, he never wanted to be locked in a luxury office. To this day, she prefers to sit on the floor, in Zara’s women’s section, surrounded by clothes.
La Coruna currently employs 5,500 people, including 140 designers and hundreds of seamstresses, who help make the team’s ideas a reality.
The heir
Marta Ortega goes there every morning after leaving her son at school. It has been several years since he, as a recent university graduate, worked at Bershka on King’s Road, London.
“In my first week, I thought I would not survive,” she said in a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal in August. “But then you get a little addicted to the store. Some people never want to leave. “It’s the heart of the company,” he said.
Now, she visits Zara stores almost every week, as before taking over as president, she supervised the women’s collection and the brand image.
Unlike her father, who never gives interviews or is not photographed, Marta Ortega, with her practically chic style, has become Zara’s face.
In Spain, after all, she is treated like a blue blood, since the paparazzi chase her for a photo. However, she says she can walk the streets of La Coruna quietly. What is certain is that her marriage to Carlos Torretta, former executive of a modeling agency and son of designer Roberto Torretta, was a huge secular event that monopolized the interest of the press in her country and beyond.
Among the guests of the “wedding of the year”, as it was characterized, was the foam of Spain. Among those who honored the couple was Athens Onassis, who is friendly with Ortega through their common love for horses. Besides, before devoting herself completely to Zara, the Spanish heiress also went down to equestrian competitions, while in her first marriage she was married to the horseman Sergio Alvarez Moya.
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