Have you ever wondered how the famous Spanish clothing company ‘Zara’ got its name?
Some of you may have thought that behind the name ‘Zara’ hides an elegant Spaniard who inspired the owner of the famous chain of stores. However, that is far from reality because the name ‘Zara’ was inspired by a Greek… Alexis Zorbas.
When Zara founder Amancio Ortega was looking for a name for his first store in La Coruña, Spain in 1975, he decided to call it “Zorba” from the 1964 film “Zorba the Greek”, Zara’s communications director, Jesus Echevarría told the New York Times.
However two blocks down from Ortega’s shop, another Spaniard had the same inspiration and opened a bar called ‘Zorba.’ He complained it would be too confusing to have two Zorbas in the same town, one selling beers and the other clothes. So, Ortega was forced to change the name of his clothing store.
By rearranging some of the letters, Ortega came up with the new name ‘Zara’.
“I don’t think they were thinking of making history, just that it was a nice name, but apparently there was a bar that was called the same, Zorba, like two blocks away, and the owner of the bar came and said, ‘This is going to confuse things to have two Zorbas.’ They had already made the molds for the letters in the sign, so they just rearranged them to see what they could find. They found Zara,” Echevarría continued.
Zara specialises in fast fashion, and products include clothing, accessories, shoes, swimwear, beauty, and perfumes. Today, there are 2,259 Zara stores in 96 countries.
