Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2010, when Ortega was Spain’s richest man and seventh on the Forbes world list; Inditex’s launch of its first online stores, described as happening this year, refers to 2010.
Everyone who knows Amancio Ortega, currently the richest man in Spain and seventh on the Forbes world list, agrees that he has a reputation for being strict when it comes to business, yet he is very human and warm in his dealings with his employees.
Any of his employees can talk to him and tell him anything, a quality that many managers and business owners who can’t hold a candle to him should learn. In fact, one of the secrets of his success is that he knows how to listen. It is because Amancio listened that he is who he is today. Let’s see why I say this.
At 17 he was working in a clothes shop, a shirt shop to be precise, and Amancio watched people come in looking for a particular product and not find it. The shop owner never listened to the customer, something Amancio took note of.
If you decide to open a business, you have to listen to the market and to your customers’ needs. Otherwise the business is yours, but not the customer’s, and unless you buy the clothes yourself, customers won’t if you don’t have what they are looking for.
The story goes that Amancio Ortega was once stopped at a traffic light when he saw a young man on a motorbike wearing a jacket covered in pins and badges. He thought that if he made that jacket with the badges already on it, it could become a fashion for daring young people, and so it did.
A month later he launched the product in his stores, and the jackets were snapped up in record time.
Two other traits set Amancio Ortega apart:
- He doesn’t work for money but out of a passion for fashion, with money as the reward for a job well done.
- He has never lost his simplicity. Amancio admits that he doesn’t like glamour or surrounding himself with big business figures, because he doesn’t quite fit into that circle. He has no education or training in business (in his own words), but if he won’t say it, I will: in business he has nothing to learn from studying, because he has an innate gift for business vision that makes him a person of natural intelligence.
If he sees that a garment isn’t selling in one of his stores, he quickly puts it on sale to get rid of it, or sends it straight back to the warehouse so as not to spoil the quality of his stores.
Vision of the future and adaptability: As it happens, if you look at the best Spanish executives, they all belong to the old school of business, but with a great capacity to adapt to modern times.
In Spain we don’t have, as the United States does, 23-year-olds who build business empires, like Facebook, whose creator was 22, or Google, whose founders were 23 and 24, not to mention Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who were practically teenagers when they turned their business idea into reality.
Amancio Ortega has realised how important the internet is, and this year he is moving into online fashion with his first online clothing stores. That is certainly something investors like, since it will considerably increase sales.
This is Amancio Ortega, and these are the keys to his success in what is today an empire called Inditex.
Remember: in any business we should follow our passion, but our passion must be closely aligned with what the customer wants. Listen to your customers and listen to your employees. If you think you are already perfect enough not to need advice, you are falling into the greatest imperfection of all.
Further reading
- Steve Jobs’ early days: a motivational story
- The mindset of an entrepreneur, by Donald Trump
- A leader’s mistakes
- Why new businesses fail
Featured image: Gandalf and Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}