Marta Ortega Pérez, after 15 years of working in various positions at Zara, will take over the presidency of Inditex this year.
The daughter of tycoon Amancio Ortega Pérez started working at Zara as a simple saleswoman while her father held the reins of the business she founded in 1963 in the province of La Coru .a in Spain. Now at the age of 37, she assumes that position after internal reshuffles that took place in the group and various other promotions and the appointment of the new managing director.
The changes did not agree with many investors who were outraged after the succession of the youngest daughter to the throne of the fast fashion giant. However, it seems that she is the most suitable to take on this demanding role since she has experienced all the stages of the company from the production of the products to the sale and has really gained the practical experience that enables her to manage. As she has stated that “I have been living and breathing for this company since my childhood”.
Chronology
The curious thing is that although she has worked in very different roles in the same company she never had a specific title before her recent promotion. Something very reminiscent of her father. The 85-year-old Amancio has always protected his privacy to the point where his first public photo appeared in 1999. He has not given a press conference when, although he holds the second place for the richest man in Europe with a fortune of 75 billion dollars.
According to various biographers, the founder Zara was born in 1936 shortly before the Spanish Civil War. With a father who worked as a railway worker, a mother who worked as a maid and three older brothers, she grew up poor and at the age of 14 she left school and got a job as a local tailor in her hometown of La Coruna.
In 1963 he decided to start his own business and create quilted bathrobes, while ’75 is the milestone year of his career. He takes the big step and opens his first finished product store that he made. He wanted to name it Zorba because of his love for the eponymous character but unfortunately this name belonged to another company so he tried to paraphrase it eventually giving birth to Zara. The success was great and so in ’88 he opens the first store outside Spain in Portugal. In the early 1990s, Zara traveled to New York and Paris.
The empire he built includes the largest ready-made clothing company in the world, with more than 6,600 stores and sales of 20.4 billion euros, according to 2020 data.
Zara before and after Marta
After the success of her father, her childhood was completely different from his own and not at all poor. She took ballet and equestrian classes, participated in at least 400 international equestrian competitions, and for her family built her own stables in La Coru .a, the club’s headquarters.
The Zara avant-garde is the result of the insightful Ortega Pérez who managed to adapt the haute couture designs to pieces of “fast” fashion and sell them at reasonable prices. At the same time the company’s collection is constantly changing by adding new designs to the existing ones, at the same time that competitors need entire seasons to achieve this. She herself has hired show people, stylists and fashion photographers for her campaigns, as she said in an interview with the Wall Street magazine “I think it is important to build bridges between high fashion and High street, between the past and the present, between technology and fashion, between art and functionality “.
Outgoing Inditex president Pablo Isla describes the family as very humble with a collective conscience, as evidenced by the fact that Amancio worked inside the factory, as did Marta. In addition to the above, Baroness Denise Kingsmil, who has been acting director of the inditex board since 2016, considers it an excellent choice that has been considered for some time. For her, Marta knows the business policy very well and is able to bring a new approach to the company culture.
The new president stated that it is a great honor for her to have the confidence shown in her and she is terribly excited about the future that everyone will write together within the company.
Savoirville
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