Amancio Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the world. Ortega is the founder of Inditex, a pioneer of fast fashion, an entrepreneur with over 60 years of experience, and has created a business model that is studied in universities that he could not access. His life story is inspiring, educational, and full of valuable ideas for future generations of founders. This episode is about what I learned from reading This is Amancio Ortega: The Man Who Created Zara by Covadonga O'Shea.
Amontio Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the world with a net worth around $120 billion.
And as I was reading this biography of Ortega, the same idea just kept coming to my mind over and over again.
The fact that Ortega is the Henry Ford of fashion.
If you go back and you read Henry Ford's autobiography, or really any biography written about him, you realize that Henry Ford's philosophy was get rid of waste, increase efficiency through technology, lower your prices to increase your volume, and you'll make more money overall, even though you're making less money or less profit per car in the case of Ford, or piece of clothing in the case of Ortega.
Watch your costs religiously and then bring that business process in house.
So vertically integrate as much as possible and then always focus on service.
Henry Ford was determined to concentrate on the lower end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive his cost down and at the same time feed even more demand for his product.
It was a fundamentally different philosophy than the rest of his industry at the time.
And you could say the exact same about Ortega and his industry driving their costs down.
Watching their costs religiously is something that Ford and Ortega had in common with each other and in common with all of history's greatest entrepreneurs.
Not only did all of history's greatest entrepreneurs study history's greatest entrepreneurs, but all of history's greatest entrepreneurs also watched their costs like their businesses depended on it.
That ever present and reoccurring theme is why RAMP is now a presenting sponsor of founders.
I've gotten to know all the co founders of Ramp and have spent a ton of time with them.
They all listen to the podcast and they've picked up on the fact that the main theme from the podcast is on the importance of watching your costs and controlling your spend and how doing so gives you a massive competitive advantage.
And that is the reason that RAMP exists.
RAMP exists to give you everything you need to control your spend.
RAMP exists to give you everything you need to make cost control an obsession.
RAMP helps you run an efficient organization.
In fact, I read a RAMP customer review that sums this up perfectly.
They said ramp is like having a teammate who you never have to check in on because they have it handled.