istory Edit
Amancio Ortega opened the first Zara store in 1975 in a central street in downtown A Coruña, Galicia, Spain.[5] Ortega named his store Zorba after watching the classic film Zorba the Greek, but apparently there was a bar that was called the same, Zorba, 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, and they found Zara, which leaves fans wondering where the additional A came from, but there is speculation that they had more than one set of letters.[6] In addition, the price for the letters "B" and "O" were double the price as it costs more to make them round and at the time this presented a significant cost for the new company. The first store featured low-priced lookalike products of popular, higher-end clothing fashions. The store proved to be a success, and Ortega began opening more Zara stores throughout Spain. During the 1980s, Ortega started changing the design, manufacturing, and distribution process to reduce lead times and react to new trends in a quicker way, in what he called "instant fashions". The company based its improvements in the use of information technologies and using groups of designers instead of individuals.[7]