Mel Ziegler and his wife Patricia Ziegler were the American founders of

Banana Republic In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring ...

. Along with

William Rosenzweig William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conq ...

, they also co-founded

The Republic of Tea The Republic of Tea is a privately owned American tea company based in Larkspur, California, that makes and sells more than 350 varieties of teas throughout North America. The Republic of Tea is known for packaging its loose teas and tea bags in ...

. They eventually sold both companies. Interview with Mel Ziegler. The Zieglers subsequently founded another apparel company, Zoza, but this was shut down in the

dot com crash The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

of 2000. Their eldest son,

Zio Ziegler Zio Ziegler (born 1988) is an American artist known best for his paintings and murals, many of which appear in the Mission District of San Francisco, as well as around the world such as Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Italy, and more. His paintings h ...

, is a notable large-scale metal sculptor, painter, and

street art Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art. Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graff ...

ist.. Their daughter, Aza, is a Los Angeles-based fashion designer and stylist. Her fashion line is Calle Del Mar. The couple published a 2012 memoir titled ''Wild Company, The Untold Story of Banana Republic'', recounting their quirky adventures founding Banana Republic. They are also authors of ''The Republic of Tea'', which details their unconventional founding of that company as well.

References

Bibliography

* Later re-published as: American fashion businesspeople Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-business-bio-stub