By Patricia Kowsmann 

ARTEIXO, Spain -- Inditex SA's fast-fashion model was developed long before the internet and social media universalized fashion trends and made the strict twice-a-year collection releases obsolete.

Founder Amancio Ortega, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $79.4 billion, began working as a shirt maker's delivery boy at age 14 after dropping out of school to help his struggling family.

In 1963, when he was 27, he and members of his family started their own garment-making business. He opened the first Zara store in 1975, after realizing he could do better than the retailers who were buying his clothes. In 1988 he began expanding Inditex, Zara's parent company, beyond his native Spain but refused to follow Western competitors in shifting most production to distant parts of Asia.

Mr. Ortega kept all decisions about design, manufacture and distribution centralized in this small industrial city. Inside company headquarters -- a glassy cube attached to a semicircular low-rise building -- bare walls and subdued décor reflect the Inditex motto: "The company doesn't speak; the customer speaks for the company." None of its eight brands -- including Zara, youth-oriented Pull & Bear, and higher-end Massimo Dutti -- advertises.

On a recent day at lunchtime, the hallways were swarming with twenty-something-year-old employees in baggy jeans, oversize long blazers and Adidas Stan Smith shoes. Jesús Echevarria, Inditex's communications director, said 150 languages are spoken across the company, which employs more than 150,000 people world-wide. Of the 600 designers, 350 work for Zara at the headquarters, creating more than 18,000 designs a year.

Write to Patricia Kowsmann at patricia.kowsmann@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 06, 2016 05:44 ET (10:44 GMT)