Inditex, the globally active fashion chain from Spain with an annual turnover of tens of billions of euros, has a new chairman. Marta Ortega Pérez will take over the management of the group from April, which also has a large presence in the Dutch shopping streets with Zara, Massimo Dutti and Bershka.
Ortega Pérez is the youngest daughter of the Spanish Amancio Ortega, the founder of Inditex. The 37-year-old takes over from Pablo Isla. Isla has been chairman of the conglomerate since 2011, which under his leadership increasingly focused on online sales and international expansion in China, among others.
Ortega Pérez was born in 1984 in the Galician city of Vigo, in northwestern Spain, as an only child of Amancio’s second marriage. Her father had already been active in the Spanish clothing industry for decades. In her teens, Ortega Pérez didn’t get much of the business her father was developing, except that both her parents were working a lot.
Inditex was founded in 1975 by Amancio Ortega and his then wife. In the decades that followed, the company grew into one of the world’s largest fashion concerns with 6,500 stores worldwide and factories in Europe, Asia and Africa. 140,000 people work there.
Amancio Ortega is now a multi-billionaire and therefore one of the richest Spaniards. He has been officially retired for a number of years, although he can still be seen regularly at the headquarters in the northern Spanish city of A Coruña. He still owns 59 percent of the shares.
Also read: How Zara shirts and H&M pants are ruining the climate
Started as a shop assistant
Daughter Ortega Pérez started her career in the company fifteen years ago after graduating in business administration in England. Her first position was as a store assistant at a Zara office in London, where she, like any other employee, kept the store tidy, stocked the shelves and helped customers. “The first week I thought I would not survive. But after that you get addicted to the shops. It is the heart of the company,” Pérez said in an interview with business newspaper last summer The Wall Street Journal.
Since then, Ortega Pérez has held various roles within the fashion group. In recent years, for example, she has been involved in the development of the designs and collections of Inditex, and the image of the multinational. In her own words, her goal within Inditex is to make fashion accessible to everyone and to bridge the gap between luxury fashion and fast fashion to reduce.
Despite her many years of experience within the company and her knowledge of it, Ortega Pérez still has to prove herself to the outside world. The share price of Inditex, which is listed in Madrid, fell by more than 5 percent on Tuesday after the announcement of its new role. Investors seemed concerned that the relatively young Ortega Pérez lacked the necessary experience, especially at a time when fashion chains are struggling with store closures due to the corona pandemic and supply problems. On Wednesday and Thursday, the price largely bounced back.
Downside success
Zara is Inditex’s biggest success in terms of turnover. Three quarters of the 20 billion euros in revenue in 2020 came from the popular chain. Zara has dozens of factories in Spain, Morocco, Turkey, India and China. This success also has a downside. According to a study by Greenpeace from 2012 Zara was the biggest polluter in the fashion industry.
Ortega Pérez is married to Carlos Torretta, former director of a modeling agency. Together they have a daughter. Ortega Pérez also has an eight-year-old son from a previous marriage.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 3, 2021
#Billionaire #daughter #fathers #footsteps