Isak Andic

Isak Andic Ermay (Istanbul, Turkey, 1953) is a Spanish businessman in the fashion sector, co-founder, owner and president of the textile multinational Mango. He currently owns the fifth largest fortune in Spain, being the richest man in Catalonia.

Biography

Isak was born in Turkey in 1953, comes from a Sephardic Hebrew family. His father was Manuel Andic, now deceased, and his mother was Sol Ermay (Deceased 06/15/2020) with whom he shared investments. At age At the age of 16, he moved to Barcelona with his family and siblings, settling in Barcelona and studying at the American High School.

At the end of the 70s, she married Neus Raig Tarragó, from whose marriage three children were born: Jonathan (1981), Judith (1984) and Sarah (1997). After two decades they separated. Since then she has been linked to Cristina Valls-Taberner, Adriana Abascal and Zenaida Bufill. With Zenaida, daughter of the late businessman Salvador Bufill Bernades, he began a romantic relationship in 2005 that had a crisis in 2015 and a subsequent reconciliation in 2016.

Currently, his two oldest children work in the company; Jonathan Andic since 2014 held the position of Executive Vice President and CEO of the fashion brand, previously in 2007 he was the driving force behind the creation of the men's clothing sub-brand He by Mango as well as its collection, since previously Mango was only aimed at the female audience. His other daughter Judith Andic collaborates in the design area and Isak's niece, Violeta Andic, is the director of Violeta, a Mango sub-firm specialized in clothing for curvy women.

Isak Andic is a man with a strong family character, who also feels great passion for his business work and is fond of traveling, the sea and skiing. He owns the large sailboat Nirvana Formentera of 53 meters in length valued at 30 million euros, which he wanted to replace with the construction of the Nirvana II, a project that has been paused due to the austerity policy. of the fashion house, due to its high cost and that it aspired to be the largest sailboat in the world. He also has a private plane that cost him 32 million euros used for professional purposes; and he is a regular at the winter resort of Baqueira-Beret, where he has a large mansion. As an art lover, he has a private collection of contemporary art, part of which is on display at Mango's headquarters for his employees to enjoy. Andic has led an extraordinarily discreet lifestyle, since until 2007 he did not make public appearances and it was even impossible to obtain photographs of him.

Business career

Isak Andic is the co-founder and main shareholder of the Spanish fashion group Mango, which was present in 2012 in 109 countries with more than 2,500 stores and a turnover as a chain that exceeded 2,000 M euros. It had 11,000 direct employees, of which 83% were women. Unlike its rival Inditex, Mango bases its network of stores on the support of hundreds of franchisees, while only 13% of the stores in the Amancio Ortega emporium, for which Isak has expressed his admiration in various media, are from franchise type since they have always based their model on directly operated stores, although a change in trend has been seen since 2015. There is a parallel between the two fashion magnates, although their business models differ in figures, multi-brands and in the initial approaches. Isak, like Amancio, buys a large part of the commercial premises and buildings that its stores occupy, mainly those that are located on the most famous shopping streets in the world.

In 2010 it became the second largest fortune in Spain, being surpassed in subsequent years by businessmen such as Juan Roig Alfonso. In 2011 it reached position 221 in the classification of the richest people in the world prepared by the Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of $4.8 billion.

Isak Andic, in addition to being the executive president of the textile multinational Mango, holds or has held the following positions in various institutions: Vice President of Banco Sabadell (a position he left in September 2013), Member of the International Advisory Council of IESE (IAB), the International Advisory Board of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Investment Advisory Council for Turkey. During the period from 2010 to April 2012 he chaired the Family Business Institute . He is Patron of the Princess of Asturias Foundation and the Princess of Gerona Foundation.

Mango Foundation

She arrived in Barcelona in 1968 where she began her career in fashion in 1972 when, with four hand-embroidered blouses made in Turkey, she made her first sale to a store called Ibiza in the Via Augusta in Barcelona. Before that, he continued selling in various stores in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities in Spain until he opened his first store in the Balmes market in Barcelona in 1973. From that date until 1984 he opened several multi-brand stores in Barcelona named after him < i>Izak oriented to the wholesale customer.

In 1984, at the age of 28, he met businessman Enric Casi, who helped him change his business vision to a single concept, brand and distribution chain worldwide with the creation of Mango. That same year, together with his brother Nahman and Enric, the textile chain was founded, opening the company's first store on the sought-after Paseo de Gracia street. The name of the firm was chosen after the commercial registry rejected the initial name of Bubbles and Scooter. Andic tried the exotic fruit of mango on a trip to the Philippines, and he liked it so much that, together with the fact that it was a word that had the same spelling in all languages, it was the name finally chosen for the fashion brand.^[2]

In 1994, the Andic brothers already had a hundred stores in Spain and began their international expansion, together with Enric Casi, who was in charge of the general management of Mango for two decades.