Amancio Ortega is the founder of the Spanish clothing company Inditex. Inditex is the world's largest apparel retail group, with brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear. Benefiting from the surge in sales of its subsidiaries, Ortega’s net assets rose 17% this year to reach $71.5 billion. On June 3, 2015, according to data from Bloomberg's global billionaire real-time rankings, Amancio Ortega surpassed Buffett and became the second richest person in the world. This is the first time Ortega has ranked second since Bloomberg released the Billionaires Index; on October 23, according to Forbes' list of the world's richest people, Amancio Ortega, who has been ranked second for a long time. For the first time, Beyond Bill Gates became the richest man in the new world. On September 9, 2016, according to Forbes' list of the world's richest people, Amancio Ortega, who has been in second place for a long time, once again surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world. On July 17, 2017, the "Forbes Rich List" was released, and Amancio Otto ranked third with a net asset of $83.2 billion. In March 2019, Amancio Otto ranked $62.7 billion in wealth in the 2019 Forbes Global Billionaires list.
Born in the impoverished Galician region of northwestern Spain on March 28, 1936, Amancio Ortega was the son of railroad workers and housewives. Ortega originally worked in a clothing store in La Coruña, then opened his own tailor shop to sell women's tops to clothing stores. In 1975, Amancio Ortega opened a clothing store called Zara in La Coruna with 5000 pesetas (Spanish currency, equivalent to 30 euros), and later changed its name to Inditex, becoming the second largest in the world. The clothing company has dozens of manufacturing workshops in Spain, and its stores are located in 34 countries including the United States and Japan. This is the prototype of the Inditex Group, the parent company of ZARA today. The group's market capitalization in 2001 reached 12 billion euros, surpassing Benetton, TheLimited and Next. In 2003, sales were 4.599 billion euros, net profit was 446 million euros, and the profit margin was 9.7%. By the end of 2003, there were 1922 chain stores in 48 countries and regions with 39,760 employees.
On Wednesday, 2004, at 11:15 am, in an industrial area in the port of La Corona in northwestern Spain, Amancio Ortega walked out of his office and entered a room with a television set. After 15 minutes, his company first began issuing shares to the public. When he walked out of the house at 11:45, his 60% stake was worth $6 billion, and he had just become the richest man in Spain. Later, Amancio Ortega walked into the company's dining room as usual. The Spanish billionaire is a low-key person who doesn't like publicity. Before 1999, his photos never appeared in the media. In his life, he tried to keep a low profile and refused to tie. For the company's listing, Ortega explained that he wants to ensure that the company's employees have a bright future.
On August 12, 2008, ZARA's parent company, Inditex Group of Spain, released its first quarter financial report for the fiscal year 2008, during which ZARA achieved sales of 2.22 billion euros, an increase of 9% over the previous quarter; and Inditex's global competition The GAP of rivals and sales that have been falling for four consecutive years has dropped by 10 percentage points this time to 2.17 billion euros. It seems to be a little bit more, but it is a historic turning point for the two companies. In the past, defeating GAP in the fashion retail industry was as inconceivable as it was to overtake McDonald's in the fast food industry. A spokesperson for Inditex said that the secret of ZARA's success is "to keep up with what customers want in the shortest possible time." The fast-moving fashion chain from Spain has grown at an incredible rate, starting with the first ZARA clothing store in La Coruña, which was already spread throughout Spain in the 1980s. In 1988, ZARA opened its first foreign semicolon in Porto, Portugal. In 1989, it opened its store in New York and in 1990 it entered the fashion center of Paris.