Fast-Fashion Leader Inditex Charts Own Path
06 December 2016 - 10:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Patricia Kowsmann
ARTEIXO, Spain -- Inditex SA's fast-fashion model was developed
long before the internet and social media universalized fashion
trends and made the strict twice-a-year collection releases
obsolete.
Founder Amancio Ortega, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at
$79.4 billion, began working as a shirt maker's delivery boy at age
14 after dropping out of school to help his struggling family.
In 1963, when he was 27, he and members of his family started
their own garment-making business. He opened the first Zara store
in 1975, after realizing he could do better than the retailers who
were buying his clothes. In 1988 he began expanding Inditex, Zara's
parent company, beyond his native Spain but refused to follow
Western competitors in shifting most production to distant parts of
Asia.
Mr. Ortega kept all decisions about design, manufacture and
distribution centralized in this small industrial city. Inside
company headquarters -- a glassy cube attached to a semicircular
low-rise building -- bare walls and subdued décor reflect the
Inditex motto: "The company doesn't speak; the customer speaks for
the company." None of its eight brands -- including Zara,
youth-oriented Pull & Bear, and higher-end Massimo Dutti --
advertises.
On a recent day at lunchtime, the hallways were swarming with
twenty-something-year-old employees in baggy jeans, oversize long
blazers and Adidas Stan Smith shoes. Jesús Echevarria, Inditex's
communications director, said 150 languages are spoken across the
company, which employs more than 150,000 people world-wide. Of the
600 designers, 350 work for Zara at the headquarters, creating more
than 18,000 designs a year.
Write to Patricia Kowsmann at patricia.kowsmann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 06, 2016 05:44 ET (10:44 GMT)
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