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Amancio Ortega
Ortega didn’t invent fast fashion — he industrialised proximity.
Fast fashion
Fifty-two seasons a year, and the bill sent elsewhere.
- 4
- in business
- 10:29
- average
- 42 min
- in total
- 6
- across the network
All briefs
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H&M
Erling Persson · 1947
H&M is a Swedish multinational clothing company headquartered in Stockholm, founded in 1947 by Erling Persson in Västerås as a women’s-only retailer named Hennes. Built on a fast fashion business model, it sells apparel, accessories, and homeware. In 1968, Persson acquired the hunting apparel retailer Mauritz Widforss, added menswear, and changed the name to Hennes & Mauritz. The company was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1974 and opened its first store outside Scandinavia in London in 1976. It began online retailing in 1998 using the domain hm.com, registered in 1997.
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Shein
Chris Xu · 2008
Shein is a global fast fashion e-commerce platform founded in 2008 in Nanjing, China, and currently headquartered in Singapore. It began as a drop shipping-style operation sourcing from Guangzhou’s wholesale market, then transformed into a fully integrated retailer starting in 2012. Its product range spans women’s, men’s, and children’s apparel plus accessories and cosmetics, targeting Europe, the Americas, Australia, and the Middle East. Its growth has been tied to popularity among younger Millennials and older Gen Z consumers, enabled by low pricing and rapid trend response.
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Zara (retailer)
Amancio Ortega · 1975
Zara is a case study in operational rigour, not branding or tech. Its advantage is physical: proximity, control, and repetition — not algorithms or virality.