Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2011. Ortega’s standing as Spain’s richest man and among the world’s ten richest, Inditex’s recently launched online stores and its expansion into new markets all reflect that year.
Amancio Ortega, Spain’s richest man thanks to the Inditex empire and one of the ten richest men in the world, is considered a top-notch businessman. As an investor, however, he may not be the best example to hold up, at least outside of investing in businesses.
Amancio Ortega’s investment portfolio is known for its recent losses, whether because of poor stock picks or poor advice on where to invest. His latest disastrous investment was in his well-known SICAVs (Spanish investment companies), which he has had to get rid of at a loss of millions.
Then again, everyone has an Achilles’ heel, and someone like Amancio Ortega can afford one, because as an investor in business systems, a visionary and a creator of business strategies, we may be talking about one of the smartest people on the planet.
Amancio Ortega decided to invest in a franchise system, while also keeping a large number of company-owned stores. Ortega has no competition, because the only competitor of one of his stores is another store he owns.
His motto: “Why have just one store on a main street when I can have all my stores on the same street?”
And that’s exactly what he has done. On the main streets of the big cities we can see Zara, Stradivarius, Bershka, Massimo Dutti and so on… all of them belong to his retail network, and every single one of them brings him income.
Amancio Ortega is old school, but he has known how to adapt to modern times and has invested in moving onto the internet by creating online stores, which are already earning him an excellent return.
The Inditex empire keeps growing and entering new markets, so today we could say that Amancio Ortega is a great investor, even if every time he invests in the stock market or in other kinds of investment vehicles it turns out disastrously.
Without a doubt, Amancio Ortega is a different kind of investor who makes a different kind of investment, but investments they are.
Further reading
Featured image: Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
