BIOGRAPHY
Amancio Ortega Gaona was born the 28 of March of 1936 (age 80) in Busdongo de Arbas, Leon, Spain. He went to La Coruña at the age of 14, leaving school, there he worked with his father on a railway. Shortly after, he found a job in a clothes store called Gala, he learned how to make clothes by hand there and he worked over there. In 1975, he opened his first Zara store with his wife Rosalía Mera.
BACKGROUND
Amancio Ortega built a company that made him the second more rick person in the world, that company is call Zara. Zara is a clothing company that was founded on 1975, it has 2169 shops now a days and it has a revenue of US$15.9 billion.
STARTING
Amancio Ortega opened the first Zara store in in Galicia, Spain under the name Zorba, but there was another shop already called Zorba, so he change the name to Zara. In 1980, the company started its international expansion in Portugal. In 1989, they penetrated the US market and in 1990, they entered into the French market.
ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGY
Zara is a high-fashion, low-cost clothes business, that made Zara that big as it is right now, it gives you good products for a really good price, that made it grow fast and a lot. They started like a small business and then Zara went growing, expanding the shops to other parts of Spain, and later on to Portugal.
WEB LINK
http://www.zara.com/es/
INTERESTING FACTS
- More than 200 people compose Zara's creative team.
- Zara's giant warehouse, at five million square feet.
- Fifty percent of Zara products are still made in Spain.
- Zara can have a new design created and in stores in just two weeks.
QUESTION
How did u felt when your company started growing, and you started becoming a rich man?
HUMANITARIAN WORK
The Amancio Ortega Foundation has donated 20 million euros to the international Roman Catholic charity, Cáritas, to help people with food, place to sleep and medicines.