The Most Humble Figure In The Fashion World: The Abdication Of Emperor Zara.

No media photo time, no formal farewell and celebration banquet.

The 74 year old billionaire avoided interviews and reports. He rarely appeared in public or even turned away from the Spanish crown prince. He simply sent a short notice to his 98000 employees, announcing that he would appoint the vice president of the group and CEO Pablo Isla to take his place and steer the T catwalk into the textile Empire of fashion life.

"Dear friends, now is the time to announce this message to you. Pablo Isla will be the CEO to attend the next board meeting. We are full of hope and responsibility."

At the same time, he praised his successor as "perfect combination of youth and experience".

In the five years of Isla's inauguration to the group, the 47 year old successor pushed other brands from Zara and Inditex to Asia and established a network sales system, Zara.com.

Keeping his usual style, his father, a railway worker's Amancio Ortega, ranked ninth on the Forbes rich list in 2010, but still maintained a modest style. He did not give a concrete explanation of why he chose to relay the torch to the next ruler.

But considering the age of Mr. Ortega and the healthy development of the company during the global recession, it is also an appropriate period of change.

Its cheap and stylish clothing stores, including Zara's sister brands such as Pull &Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Zara Home and newly created accessories brand Uterq e, have been developing and growing in difficult times. The sales volume of Inditex at the end of the third quarter of last year was as high as 8 billion 900 million euro, up 14 percentage points.

"Now is the ideal time to resign," said Jose Luis Nueno, a marketing professor at the University of Barcelona's University of Victoria. "The company has shown its ability to operate in any external environment, while Mr. Ortega is 75 years old but still has a healthy body.

Now is the most appropriate time to declare to the market that the company will soon be managed and led by the new powers.

No one hopes that the replacement of jobs is a decision or measure that has to be taken because of the sudden illness of the manager or the poor management of the company.

Mr. Ortega's successor has been recognized by his approachable low-key boss. After retirement, Ortega still owns 6 of the company's shares.

Mr. Isla is mainly responsible for exchanges with the government, changes in stock ownership and attendance at shareholders' meetings.

Mr. Ortega was so low-key that when the stock price of Inditex went up in 2001, he only spent 15 minutes watching the news broadcast and celebrating his lunch in the company's restaurant.

"When the Prime Minister of Spain convened 20 top executive managers in the country to hold meetings to discuss the economic crisis, he did not take part in it."

Mr. Nueno said.

Nueno believes that the appointment of Isla indicates that the executive executive position of Inditex is not "the throne hereditary system", but there are still some bystanders who regard it as a temporary expediency, and manage temporarily by the manager who is very popular with the boss, so as to ensure the continuity of the family industry until the youngest daughter of Ortega is the lawful heir to prepare for the takeover.

Like her father, Marta, 26, has gradually started climbing the ladder of work. In her father's company, in 2007, she began to become a Bershka store clerk in London.

She took some exercise in Barcelona and Shanghai, and now she works at Inditex's headquarters in Artest.

Mr Ortega may be a "nightmare" of publicity staff, but he has been a hot topic in the Spanish business community.

His experience of starting from scratch and the humble origin of Galicia's barren rural area inspired and inspired a generation of entrepreneurs in the Spanish textile and garment industry.

Many details are revealed by his friends and partners, who are afraid to destroy the privacy he has been maintaining.

But we can understand the general story: without formal education, Mr. Ortega became a newspaper boy when he was 13 years old, and then he began to work as a tailor assistant.

When he observed the dealer's price, he learned every link of the chain of value control, from manufacturing to distribution, and then applied to the operation of Zara.

His first attempt at copying was in 60s, when he ran an underwear store.

He adjusted the designer's home clothes decorated with expensive flowers, and made manual cutting in his wife's sister's living room, which became the first step in his imitation of high priced goods, and it was successfully sold.

Later on, other styles were also born.

When he was 27 years old, he built his first clothing factory. In 1975, Zara's first store opened. It had a neat and orderly display of window displays and a quick replacement product line.

It lies opposite to a traditional department store, which seems to herald the coming change.

Today, Zara is the symbol of Spain as well as paella and Sanja wine. Inditex is the largest retailer in the world, better than H&M and GAP as competitors.

The company has become an example of learning research worldwide.

Its success is partly due to its efficient and agile warehousing system, which enables shops to adjust their products at the fastest speed according to the whim of consumers.

Mr. Ortega gathered his assets of up to 25 billion dollars in a low-key manner.

According to Forbes, he has considerable property in Paris, London, Lisbon and Miami, a horse race field, investment in football teams and investment in petrol, tourism and banking.

The billionaire, who did not like being photographed, always left a vague picture of him being photographed by paparazzi.

He has never been seen wearing a tie (except his own wedding).

He did not leave an official portrait before the first annual report of the company in 2001.

He did not like the same way of reporting. He was reported to have been overloaded from bankers in the early days of preparation.

"We can see that it is a complete torture for him," a banker told reporters at the time.

Mr. Nueno revealed that he rarely used business terms. He preferred to think about the layout and clothing design of the store than the expansion plan. In addition to the busy shop opening rate, almost every 36 hours a new shop was born.

Even after retirement, he is likely to continue to work.

"I don't think Mr. Ortega will play golf," Nueno said.

"He focuses on the soul of the company.

I don't think he will leave the team until he dies. "

Those who remain in the family:

Sugar family

The host of apprenticeship TV show (The Apprentice) once described him as a "strict love" for his children. He asked them to work at McDonald's. Now the son of Lord Sugar runs Amsair and Amsprop, the aviation and financial field of the group.

Botin family

Emilio Botin, the leader of Spanish banking giant Santander, nominated his daughter to become chief executive of the bank last year.

In the three generation of directors who were male, she became the first female leader to take the lead in Spain's largest bank.

Murdoch family

He dropped out of Harvard, but Rupert, Murdoch's youngest son James, is now the chief executive of Murdoch's brand News Corp Europe and Asia.

His shrewd business sense made him popular with his father and inherited his father's career.