全球第三富豪：Zara时装帝国掌门人的隐秘生活

    西班牙北部的拉科鲁尼亚，一辆摩托车呼啸着驶到交通灯下，在一辆黑色的林肯城市轿车旁停住。车内的乘客向车窗外瞟了一眼，看到了俯在车把上的年轻摩托车骑手。后者身穿一件贴花斜纹粗布夹克，带有一种上世纪70年代的复古风情。车里的男子比骑手要大上几十岁，他把视线集中在那件夹克上。老年男子拿起他的手机，打给自己办公室的一名助手。他的视线仍然锁定在骑手的身上，对那件夹克的针脚、剪裁和颜色进行了描述，最终发出一条指令：“¡Hácedla！”意思是：“做出来”。

    绿灯亮起，骑手驾车驶远，他并不知道自己跟身上的夹克刚刚在我们这个时代最伟大之一的零售店里跑了一回龙套。

    车内的男子是阿曼西奥•奥尔特加•高纳，他是全球排名第三的富豪。在西班牙海风吹拂的西北部海岸线上，印第迪克集团（Inditex）这位76岁的创始人已经在加利西亚省的一角避开公众视线，生活在拉科鲁尼的中部多年。这是一座拥有246,000人口的城市。每年有数以百万计的消费者光顾印第迪克集团的旗舰品牌Zara，给奥尔特加带来了惊人的财富，但他的顾客中却很少有人听说过他的名字。这是奥尔特加本人要求的，他回避在社交场合露面，并拒绝一切采访（包括本文）。在1999年之前，他的照片从未在媒体上出现过。

    然而，在一个远离巴黎、米兰和纽约浮华的世界中，奥尔特加的时装帝国已经将触角伸向了80多个国家。从40年前开始，奥尔特加摧毁了欧洲时装商店精炼数十年的商业模式，并以这个行业前所未见的快速周转模式取而代之。数十年后，Zara已经成为全球最大的时装零售商。

    奥尔特加按照两项基本原则建立起自己的帝国：给消费者他们想要的东西；比竞争对手更快地满足消费者。这两条组织原则已经让Zara（和奥尔特加）成为一个不太可能的颠覆者。相对于传统零售商，它更强调对供应链的优化。这两条原则还是印第迪克集团获得惊人成功的秘诀。“在这个时候，很少有公司能对印第迪克集团形成挑战。该集团与其说是在跟别的公司竞争，倒不如说是在跟自己赛跑，”伦敦巴克莱资本（Barclays Capital）的零售业分析师克里斯托洛斯•查维亚勒斯说。服装零售商优衣库（Uniqlo）的创始人柳井正放言，他的人生目标就是击败Zara。去年8月，时装公司埃斯普利特（Esprit）的股价在宣布其首席执行官新人选后上涨了28%，而这位首席执行官原先只是印第迪克集团的分销和运营主管。

    西班牙可能正在遭受几代人以来最为严重的经济衰退，失业率已经达到24%，而且背负着沉重的债务。但在印第迪克集团内部，危机却远在天边。“他们生活在一个不同的世界，”莫德斯托•隆巴说，他是西班牙时装设计师协会（Spanish Association of Fashion Designers）的主席。去年12月，印第迪克集团首席执行官帕布罗•伊斯拉宣布，该集团2012年前三季度的营收同比增长17%——这9个月的营收总额达到146亿美元——净利润跟2010年持平，达到27.1亿美元。到目前为止，该集团的增长势头依然没有显露出放缓的迹象。

    2011年，印第迪克集团生产了835,000种服装。平均算下来，每天都有新的Zara零售店开张，该集团的第6,000家门店刚刚在伦敦牛津街启动。美国有46家Zara零售店，而这个数字在中国和印度分别达到347和1,938。奥尔特加在印第迪克集团持有的股份超过59%，他在去年7月超越沃伦•巴菲特，成为仅次于卡洛斯•斯利姆•埃卢和比尔•盖茨的全球第三富豪。这位在家乡大街上透过车窗寻找灵感的隐逸、神秘的西班牙人，现在的个人净资产约为560亿美元。（财富中文网）

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    译者：王灿均

    The motorbike roared up to the traffic light in La Coruña in northern Spain and stopped alongside a black Town Car. From inside, the passenger glanced out his window and saw the young biker leaning over the handlebars, jean jacket decorated with appliquéd patches, a throwback to the 1970s. The man in the car, decades older than the biker, zoomed in on the jacket. The old man grabbed his cellphone and, as the story goes, called an aide in his office. His eyes still fixed on the biker, the man described the jacket's stitching, its shape and color, and signed off with a single instruction: "¡Hácedla!" Make it.

    The light turned green, the biker pulled away; unbeknown to him, he and his jacket had just played a walk-on role in one of the greatest retail stories of our time.

    Amancio Ortega Gaona -- the man inside the car -- is the third-richest man on earth. In this provincial corner of Galicia, on Spain's windswept northwestern coastline, the 76-year-old founder of the Inditex Group has spent years secluded from public view, all while living in the middle of La Coruña, a city of 246,000 people. Among the millions of shoppers who patronize Inditex's flagship brand, Zara, and have made Ortega unfathomably rich, few have even heard his name. Ortega has made sure of that, shunning social appearances and refusing all interview requests (including for this article). Until 1999 no photograph of Ortega had ever been published.

    And yet, a world away from the glitz of Paris, Milan, and New York, Ortega has built a fashion empire that reaches into more than 80 countries. Beginning 40 years ago, Ortega ripped up the business model that had been refined over decades by Europe's fashion houses and replaced it with one of the most brutally fast turnaround schedules the industry had ever attempted. Decades later Zara is the world's biggest fashion retailer.

    Ortega built his empire on two basic rules: Give customers what they want, and get it to them faster than anyone else. The twin organizing principles have made the company (and Ortega) into an unlikely iconoclast, more of an optimal supply chain than a traditional retailer. They are also the secret to Inditex's astonishing success. "Very few companies can challenge Inditex at this time. The company is in a race with themselves rather than anything else," says Christodoulos Chaviaras, a retail analyst at Barclays Capital in London. Tadashi Yanai, founder of clothing retailer Uniqlo, has made it his stated goal in life to beat Zara. And last August shares of the fashion company Esprit rose 28% on the day it announced its new CEO, Inditex's former distribution and operations manager.

    Spain might be suffering through its worst recession in generations, with 24% unemployment and crippling debt, but within Inditex, the crisis might as well be happening on Mars. "They live in a different world," says Modesto Lomba, president of the Spanish Association of Fashion Designers. In December, CEO Pablo Isla announced that revenue was up 17% year on year for the first three quarters of 2012 -- that nine-month sales revenue amounts to $14.6 billion -- and net profits matched 2010's, at $2.71 billion. So far, the growth shows no signs of slowing.

    Inditex produced 835,000 garments in 2011. A new Zara store opens every day, on average; Inditex's 6,000th store just launched on London's Oxford Street. There are 46 Zara stores in the U.S., 347 in China, and 1,938 in Spain. Ortega controls more than 59% of the company's shares, and last July he overtook Warren Buffett to become the world's third-richest man, behind Carlos Slim Helú and Bill Gates. The reclusive, enigmatic Spaniard, hunting for ideas from his car window on the streets of his hometown, is now worth about $56 billion.