Amancio Ortega, the Spanish retail genius who started Zara, passed
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world on
Wednesday. Shares of Ortega’s business Inditex, parent company to Zara,
Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear, ticked up 2.5% Wednesday, boosting his
personal fortune by $1.7 billion. That lifted Ortega’s net worth from
$77.8 billion to $79.5 billion. Gates is worth an estimated $78.5
billion.
The son of a railway worker from La Coruña, Spain,
Ortega is as reclusive as he is rich. He started his career as a store
clerk in his hometown before opening his own business. Beginning with
less than $100, he and his wife Rosalia Mera began making lingerie,
pajamas and nightgowns in their living room.
In 1975, the couple
(who eventually divorced) decided to open a store named Zara. Eight
years later, Ortega had expanded to nine locations around Spain. In
1984, he opened a 10,000 square foot logistics hub.
Unlike most
retailers, Inditex hardly relies on advertising. Ortega has instead
devoted most of his resources into turning his company into the most
efficient retailing operation in the world. When companies like Gap and
H&M were taking five months to design, make, distribute and sell new
products in the early 2000s, Zara was doing it in three weeks. That
meant Ortega’s companies could keep up with the whims of shoppers much
more easily than its competitors — and also had to spend less on
warehousing.
Ortega took the business public in 2001 and debuted
on the Forbes billionaires list the same year, with a net worth of $6.6
billion. By then, Gates was already the richest man in the world, with a
fortune of $58.7 billion.
From 2001 to 2002, as most
billionaires struggled to hold onto their riches amid the dot-com crash,
Ortega gained an additional $2.5 billion and became the world’s
25th-richest man. He repeated the trick seven years later, when the
world plunged into crisis. From 2009 to 2013, while the Spanish economy
was reeling, Ortega personally gained $39 billion.
Ortega briefly
took the title of world’s richest man for the first time in October
2015, when Inditex shares hit an all-time high and boosted Ortega’s net
worth to $80 billion. But the stock quickly dipped, and Gates once again
claimed the throne. The two billionaires will likely continue to
exchange the title as the stock prices of their holdings continue to
bounce up and down.
Gates has donated nearly $31 billion in stock and
cash to his foundation over his lifetime. If the Microsoft cofounder
were not such a prolific philanthropist, neither Ortega nor anyone else
on Earth would be anywhere close to as rich as Gates.
Source:
www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/09/08/amancio-ortega-richest-bill-gates-world-spain-inditex-microsoft-zara/
