When Zara first opened its doors in 1975, it did so with the name Zorba. Amancio Ortega – the founder of Zara – was so inspired by the 1964 film Zorba the Greek that he named his clothing business Zorba.
Ortega’s homage was soon to be quashed when he realised that there was a bar two blocks away that had already secured the name and rumour has it that the owner of the bar had told Ortega that “this is going to confuse things to have two Zorbas”.
Apparently, La Coruna in Spain isn’t big enough for two Greek named businesses. Having already made the moulds of the letters for his sign, Ortega thought laterally and started to rearrange the letters Z, A and R and came up with Zara.
From those early Grecian beginnings to now, Zara stands as one of the largest international fashion retailers in the world with a total of 1,671 stores – five of those are in Australia. Zara is the only fashion store that changes it’s range every fortnight.