Amancio Ortega Gaona, Inditex’s founder, was still its president and principal shareholder in
early 2002 and still came in to work every day, where he could often be seen lunching in the company
cafeteria with employees. Ortega was otherwise extremely reclusive, but reports indicated that he
had been born in 1936 to a railroad worker and a housemaid and that his first job had been as an
errand boy for a La Coruña shirtmaker in 1949. As he moved up through that company, he
apparently developed a heightened awareness of how costs piled up through the apparel chain. In
1963, he founded Confecciones Goa (his initials reversed) to manufacture products such as
housecoats. Eventually, Ortega’s quest to improve the manufacturing/retailing interface led him to
integrate forward into retailing: the first Zara store was opened on an upmarket shopping street in La
Coruña, in 1975. From the beginning, Zara positioned itself as a store selling “medium quality fashion
clothing at affordable prices.” By the end of the 1970s, there were half a dozen Zara stores in Galician
cities.