The small New Zealand town that took on Harrods

In June 1986 the town of Ōtorohanga took on the might of one of the world’s richest men, Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods swanky department store in London.

Al Fayed had sued Henry Harrod from Palmerston North to prevent him calling his business ‘Harrods’.

When a couple of residents of the King Country town got wind of Henry’s plight, they decided to do something about it, Ōtorohanga mayor Rodney Dow told RNZ’s Afternoons.

The small town that took on Harrods Department Store

Afternoons

“A couple of local people from Ōtorohanga heard about this and one was a guy called Barry Marx and they thought bugger let’s stick together and support this poor guy, he’s only using his last name.

“And along with the local business chairperson at the time, Rocky Climo, they renamed the Ōtorohanga Town hall Harrods Hall for a week.”

But it didn’t end there with the support of the District Council, Ōtorohanga changed its name to ‘Harrodsville’ and practically every business in Ōtorohanga changed its name to ‘Harrods’ for one week.

Even the local cop shop became New Scotland Yard, Dow says.

The town briefly had 73 Harrods businesses including Harrods Burgers, Harrods chemists and Harrods dress shops and the Harrods Bank of New Zealand. For the devout there was the Harrodsville Baptist Church.

Small towns such as Ōtorohanga were doing it tough at the time Dow says with high interest rates and the economy struggling.

And the act of defiance against the retail giant gave the town a boost at the time, Dow says.

“Apparently a Wellington guy was driving through town, and he stopped at Hardy Toyota, seen a brand-new Toyota and bought it.”

The man dropped $42,000 on his new “flash” ute, Dow says.

The local paper reported at the time the man had always wanted to buy something from Harrods.

News of the little New Zealand town lampooning Al Fayed went around the world, and he eventually withdrew his legal action against Henry Harrod of Palmerston North.

Now the town is celebrating the 40th anniversary of it’s David and Goliath uprising with a new an exhibition at its museum.

Memorabilia from that time has been dusted off and will be on show from Wednesday 11 June.

Dow hopes it will give the museum, which was flood affected earlier this year, a boost.

“Hopefully with Field Days traffic going on we’ll get a few people stopping.

“We’ve named a few things around town put the Harrods signs up, it’s all just a bit of fun really and hopefully a good news story from around New Zealand because it’s been through a bit of a tough time.”

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