Inditex CEO says that Marta Ortega endorses the commitment of the next generation to the company
The CEO of Inditex, Óscar García Maceiras, has assured this Thursday that the arrival of Marta Ortega as Chairman of the group endorses the commitment of the next generation to the continuity of the company, which has “enormous potential for the future”.
Inditex’s chief executive took part this afternoon in the 6th International Congress of Executives held by the Association for Progress in Management (APD) in Seville, where he reviewed the history of a group that was founded in 1963 as a small textile workshop and has become one of the world’s largest fashion giants.
It has been more than ten years since the founder of Inditex, Amancio Ortega, handed over the reins of the company, but the businessman “is still present” in it and continues to be “a source of inspiration every day”, explained García Maceiras, who took over as CEO in November 2021.
The main legacy left by Ortega, the richest man in Spain, has been an “extraordinarily powerful” corporate culture based on three pillars: “prudence, humility and extraordinary ambition”.
Humility, said the executive, because he is constantly listening to understand what customers want; prudence because as good Galicians they have “their feet on the ground”, and ambition because “only from there is it possible from a small corner of Spain to be able to go from a small textile workshop to what Inditex is today”.
García Maceiras has also highlighted the “enormous feeling of belonging” to the group that the workers have and their “very high degree of individual responsibility”: “We prefer to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission”.
This is the character that characterises us and that probably leads us to think that we are a company with “duende”, in which we consider that there is no goal that cannot be achieved”, said the CEO, who added: “Amancio Ortega is the person who has given us the corporate culture and who continues to be a source of inspiration for all of us”.
Marta Ortega, the youngest daughter of the founder of Inditex, took over the non-executive chairmanship of the group on 1 April, culminating the process of orderly succession of the corporation.
According to García Maceiras, her arrival, in addition to aligning the listed company with the best practices in corporate governance, represents the commitment of the new family generation to the continuity of the company and its future: “And that is very important because we all aspire to continue growing with this prudence, humility and enormous ambition”, he said.
The CEO of Inditex has assured, in this sense, that the group has a business model that is “extraordinarily solid, which is at full capacity” and that it has “enormous potential for the future”.
Inditex, the holding company that brings together brands such as Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho and Stradivarius, currently has more than 6,000 physical shops in a hundred countries and operates online in more than 200 markets.
The company, with more than 165,000 employees worldwide, has achieved sales of almost 15,000 million euros and a profit of 1,794 million euros in the first half of the year.
And despite its strong internationalisation, García Maceiras pointed out, it does not forget its Spanish origin and its link with Spain, as it has more than 6,000 suppliers in this country.
