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Bata
Company typePrivately held company
Joint-stock company
IndustryRetail and Manufacturing
FoundedZlín, Czech Republic (August 24, 1894 (1894-08-24))
FounderTomáš Baťa
HeadquartersLausanne, Switzerland
Number of locations
Presence in 70 countries
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Tomas G. Bata (Chairman)
Jack Clemons (CEO)
ProductsFootwear, Clothing and Fashion accessory
OwnerBata Family
Number of employees
20,000 (2012)
Websitewww.bata.com

Bata (also known as Bata Shoe Organization) is a family-owned global footwear and fashion accessory manufacturer and retailer with acting headquarters located in Lausanne, Switzerland.[1] Organised into three business units, Bata Europe, based in Italy, Bata Emerging Market (Asia, Pacific, Africa and Latin America), based in Singapore, and Bata Protective (worldwide B2B operations), based in the Netherlands, the organisation has a retail presence in over 70 countries and production facilities in 26 countries.[2] In its history, Bata has sold more than 14 billion pairs of shoes and was awarded the Guinness World Record as the "Largest Shoe Retailer and Manufacturer".[3]

Origins and history

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Bata logo evolution

The T. & A. Bata Shoe Company was founded in 1894 in Zlín (then Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the Czech Republic) by Tomáš Baťa (Czech pronunciation: ['toma?? 'baca]), his brother Antonín and his sister Anna, whose family had been cobblers for generations.[4] The company employed 10 full-time employees with a fixed work schedule and a regular weekly wage, which was unusual in that time.

Tomáš, Antonín and their sister Anna Baťa

Mrs Sonja I. Bata:

This history started with the establishment of the business in 1894 by Tomáš Baťa in Zlín (Czech Republic). The founder left a Moral Testament to his successors, stating that the entreprise was not only for them, but also for the associates and the communities where the entreprise operated. It is this moral mission which has inspired the enormous contribution which the Organization has made, particularly in many emerging areas of the world in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Bata pioneers were often the first to establish an industrial entreprise, which worked primarily with local people and local materials to produce affordable footwear for the local population. Many companies built housing, a hospital, a school and recreational facilities for the benefit of associates and their families. We stand today in the shoes of our predecessors who built the entreprise.

In the summer of 1895, Tomáš found himself facing financial difficulties, and debts abounded.[5] To overcome these setbacks, Tomáš decided to sew shoes from canvas instead of leather. This type of shoe became very popular and helped the company grow to 50 employees. Four years later, Bata installed its first steam-driven machines, beginning a period of rapid modernization.

In 1904, following a trip to the United States, Baťa introduced mechanized production techniques that allowed the Bata Shoe Company to become one of the first mass producers of shoes in Europe. Its first mass product, the "Batovky", was a leather and textile shoe for working people that was notable for its simplicity, style, light weight and affordable price.[6] Its success helped company’s growth and, by 1912, Bata was employing 600 full-time workers, and another several hundred who worked out of their homes in neighboring villages.[7]

World War I

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In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, the company had a significant development due to military orders. From 1914 to 1918 the number of Baťa’s employees increased ten times. The company started opening its own stores in Zlín, Prague, Liberec, Vienna and Pilsen, among other towns.

In the global economic slump that followed World War I, the newly created country of Czechoslovakia was particularly hit hard. With its currency devalued by 75%, demand for products dropped, production was cut back, and unemployment was at an all-time high. Tomas Bata responded to the crisis by cutting the price of Bata shoes in half. The company’s workers agreed to a temporary 40 percent reduction in wages; in turn, Bata provided food, clothing, and other necessities at half-price. He also introduced one of the first profit sharing initiative transforming all employees into associates with a shared interest in the company's success, today's equivalent of performance based incentives and stock options.

Shoemaker to the World

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Consumer response to the price drop was dramatic. While most competitors were forced to close due to the crisis in demand between 1923 and 1925, Bata was expanding as demand for the inexpensive shoes grew rapidly. The Bata Shoe Company increased production and hired more workers. Zlin became a veritable factory town, a "Bataville" covering several acres. On the site were grouped tanneries, a brickyard, a chemical factory, a mechanical equipment plant and repair shop, workshops for the production of rubber, a paper pupl and cardboard factory (for production of packaging), a fabric factory (for lining for shoes and socks), a shoe-shine factory, a power plant and a farming activities to cover both food and energy needs.


The T. & A. Baťa Shoe Company
  • Bata's Skyscraper
    Bata's Skyscraper
  • Batovka Shoe
    Batovka Shoe
  • Bata in Zlin
    Bata in Zlin
  • Bata's Corporate Housing
    Bata's Corporate Housing
  • 1922 Advertising
    1922 Advertising
  • Bata Store in the 1920's
    Bata Store in the 1920's
  • Bata Store in the 1920's
    Bata Store in the 1920's

International growth

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Tomáš Baťa
Bata logos around the world

Bata also began to build towns and factories outside of Czechoslovakia (Poland, Latvia, Romania, Switzerland, France) and to diversify into such industries as tanning (1915), the energy industry (1917), agriculture (1917), forest farming (1918), newspaper publishing (1918), brick manufacturing (1918), wood processing (1919), rubber industry (1923), construction industry (1924), railway and air transport (1924), book publishing (1926), film industry (1927), food processing (1927), chemical production (1928), tyre manufacturing (1930), insurance (1930), textile production (1931), motor transport (1930), sea transport (1932), and coal mining (1932). Airplane manufacturing (1934), synthetic fibre production (1935), and river transport (1938). In 1923 the company boasted 112 branches.[8]

In 1924 Tomáš displayed his business acumen by figuring out how much turnover he needed to make with his annual plan, weekly plans and daily plans. Baťa utilized four types of wages – fixed rate, individual order based rate, collective task rate and profit contribution rate. He also set what became known as Baťa prices – numbers ending with a nine rather than with a whole number. Soon Baťa found himself the fourth richest person in Czechoslovakia. From 1926 to 1928 the business blossomed as productivity rose 75 percent and the number of employees increased by 35 percent. In 1927 production lines were installed, and the company had its own hospital. By the end of 1928, the company’s head factory was composed of 30 buildings. Then the entrepreneur created educational organizations such as the Baťa School of Work and introduced the five-day work week.[9] In 1930 he established the shoe museum that maps shoe production from the earliest times to the contemporary age throughout the world.[10] By 1931 there were factories in Germany, England, the Netherlands, Poland and in other countries.

In 1932, at the age of 56, Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash during takeoff under bad weather conditions at Zlín Airport.[11] Control of the company was passed to his half-brother, Jan, and his son, Thomas John Bata, who would go on to lead the company for much of the twentieth century guided by their father’s moral testament: the Bata Shoe company was to be treated not as a source of private wealth, but as a public trust, a means of improving living standards within the community and providing customers with good value for their money. Promise was made to pursue the entrepreneurial, social and humanitarian ideals of their father.

1930s and 1940s

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Lockheed 10 Electra executive aircraft operated prewar by Bata in Europe

At the time of Tomáš's death, the Baťa company employed 16,560 people, maintained 1,645 shops and 25 enterprises. Jan Baťa, following the plans laid down by Tomas Bata before his death, expanded the company more than six times its original size throughout Czechoslovakia and the world. Plants in Britain, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Kenya, Canada and the United States, followed in the decade. In India, Batanagar was settled near Calcutta and accounted from the late 1930s nearly 7,500 Batamen.

As of 1934, the company owned 300 stores in North America, a thousand in Asia, more than 4,000 in Europe. In 1938, they employed just over 65,000 people worldwide, including 36% outside Czechoslovakia and had stakes in the tanning, agriculture, newspaper publishing, railway and air transport, textile production, coal mining and aviation realms. Jan Baťa expanded the Bohemian and Moravian part of the business, more than doubling its size to 38,000 employees, 2,200 shops and 70 enterprises. In Slovakia, the business grew from 250 employees to 12,340 and 8 enterprises.

In the face of a worldwide depression, Jan Baťa, following the plans laid down by Tomas Baťa before his death, expanded the company to more than six times its previous size throughout Czechoslovakia and the world. From his brother's death in 1932, to 1942, he grew the Bata organisation to 105,770 employees.

During the 1930s, imports from Czechoslovakia ultimately became too expensive, due to the economic crisis in Europe at the time. Jan Antonín also established subsidiaries in several foreign countries. Following the overseas expansion, Bata owned executive aircraft to transport managers between the various company locations.

World War II

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Bata International Centre 1965-2004

Anticipating World War II, Thomas J. Bata, the founder's son, together with over 100 families from Czechoslovakia, moved to Canada in 1939 to develop the Bata Shoe Company of Canada, including a shoe factory and engineering plant, centred in a town that still bears his name, Batawa, Ontario. Thomas J. Bata successfully established and ran the new Canadian operations and, during the war years, he sought to maintain the necessary coordination with as many of the overseas Bata operations as was possible. During this period, the Canadian engineering plant manufactured strategic components for the Allies' war effort and Thomas J. Bata worked together with the Czechoslovak government-in-exile of President Beneš and with other democratic powers. World War II saw many Bata businesses in Europe and the Far East destroyed. After the Second World War, the core business enterprise in Czechoslovakia and other major enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe were nationalised by the Communist governments. Thomas devoted himself to the rebuilding and growth of the Bata Shoe Organisation, together with his wife and partner, Sonja. He successfully spearheaded ethical and innovative expansion into new markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Under his leadership, the Bata Shoe Organisation experienced unprecedented growth and became the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of footwear, selling over 300 million pairs of shoes each year and employing over 80,000 people.

With Germany on the verge of invading Czechoslovakia in 1939, Bata helped re-post his Jewish employees to branches of the company all over the world. Jan Antonín Baťa moved to the US and eventually chose Brazil as his home while Tomáš Baťa’s son while Tomáš J. Baťa (Thomas J. Bata), moved to Canada with over 100 Bata employees and families to establish the Bata Shoe Company of Canada in a town named after his family – Batawa, Ontario.[12]

In 1964, the Bata Shoe Organisation moved their headquarters to Toronto, Canada—and in 1965 moved again, into an ultra-modern building, the Bata International Centre. The Bata Shoes' former headquarters in North York, Ontario was designed in the 1960s by architect John B. Parkin. The building was later sold and replaced by a cultural centre, museum, and park.[13] Other Bata family contributions to Canadian life include Mrs. Sonja I. Bata founding the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto in 1998, Mr. and Mrs. Bata being supporters of Trent University, where the Thomas J. Bata Library bears Bata's name and supporters of York University in Toronto.

Left to right: Thomas G. Bata (grandson) with Thomas J. Bata (son) pictured in front of Tomáš Baťa portrait (father)
Bata Brands Offices
Bata Czech Republic, 2012

Following World War II, governments in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and Yugoslavia confiscated and nationalized their industries in 1945, stripping Bata of its Eastern European assets. From its new base in Canada, the company gradually rebuilt itself, expanding into new markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Rather than organizing these new operations in a highly centralized structure, Bata established a confederation of autonomous units that could be more responsive to new markets in developing countries.

After the Second World War, Thomas J. Bata (Tomáš Baťa Junior), son of Tomáš Baťa led the Bata Shoe Organisation developing the company ever more.

During World War II

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Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Bata helped re-post his Jewish employees to branches of his firm all over the world.[14][15] Germany occupied the remaining part of pre-war Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939; Jan Antonín Baťa then spent a short time in jail but was then able to leave the country with his family. Jan Antonín Baťa stayed in the Americas from 1939 to 1940, but when America entered the war, he felt it would be safer for his co-workers and their families back in occupied Czechoslovakia if he left the United States. He tried to save as much as possible of the business, submitting to the plans of Germany as well as financially supporting the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile led by Edvard Beneš.

A Bata shoe factory was connected to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II.[16] The first slave labour efforts in Auschwitz involved the Bata shoe factory.[17] In 1942 a small camp was established to support the Bata shoe factory at Chemek with Jewish slave labourers.[18]

Tomas' son Thomas manager of the buying department of the English Bata Company was unable to return until after the war. He was sent to Canada by his Uncle Jan where he was the Vice President of the Bata Import and Export Company of Canada, which developed into another model community named Batawa that had been founded by Jan Antonin Bata in 1938. Foreign subsidiaries were separated from the mother company, and ownership of plants in Bohemia and Moravia was transferred to another member of the family.

Czechoslovakia after 1989

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After the "Velvet Revolution" in November 1989, Thomas J. Baťa arrived as soon as December 1989. The Czechoslovak government offered him the opportunity to invest in the ailing government-owned Svit shoe company. Since companies nationalised before 1948 were not returned to their original owners, the state continued to own Svit and privatised it during voucher privatisation in Czechoslovakia. Svit's failure to compete in the free market led to decline, and in 2000 Svit went bankrupt.

Present

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The red areas indicate areas served

After the global economic changes of the 1990s, the company closed a number of its manufacturing factories in developed countries and focused on expanding retail business. In 2004, the Bata headquarters were moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, under the leadership of Thomas G. Bata, grandson of Tomáš Baťa.

In 2008, Thomas John Bata died aged 93 at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto at the age of 93. Bata’s son, Thomas George Bata, became chairman and chief executive of the company in 2001, but the elder Bata remained active in its operations and carried business cards listing his title as "chief shoe salesman".

Today, the Bata Shoe Organization serves more than 1 million customers per day[19], employs over 40,000 people, operates more than 5,000 retail stores, manages 26 production facilities and a retail presence in over 90 countries, celebrating its 120th year of existence in 2014.

Bata-villes

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Company policy initiated under Tomas Baťa was to set up villages around the factories for the workers and to supply schools and welfare. These villages include Batadorp in the Netherlands, Baovany (present-day Partizánske) and Svit in Slovakia, Baov (now Bahòák, part of Otrokovice) in the Czech Republic, Borovo-Bata (now Borovo Naselje, part of Vukovar in Croatia then in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Bataville in Lorraine, France, Batawa in Canada, East Tilbury[20][21] in Essex, England, Batapur in Pakistan and Batanagar and Bataganj in India. There was also a factory in Belcamp, Maryland, USA, northeast of Baltimore on U.S. Route 40 in Harford County.[22]

The company, which established itself in India in 1931, started manufacturing shoes at Batanagar in 1936. In 1922, the first Bata shop abroad opened in the Netherlands; in 1933, construction began of the Bata shoe factory in Best, in the province of Brabant.

The British "Bata-ville" in East Tilbury inspired the documentary film Bata-ville: We Are Not Afraid of the Future.[23]

Bata brands

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  • Bata (Baťa in the Czech Republic)
  • Bata Comfit (Comfort Shoes)
  • Ambassador (Classic Men Shoes)
  • North Star (Urban Shoes)
  • Weinbrenner (Premium Outdoor Shoes)
  • Marie Claire (Women Shoes)
  • SunDrops (Women Shoes)
  • Bubblegummers (Children Shoes)
  • Baby Bubbles (Children Shoes)
  • Safari (Desert Shoes)
  • Power (Athletic Shoes)
  • Patapata (Flip Flops)
  • Toughees (School Shoes)
  • Verlon (School Shoes)
  • Teener (School Shoes)
  • Bata Industrials (Work & Safety Footwear)

Representatives

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Shoe Design - Bata". Prannath Parnami Universe. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  2. ^ "About Bata". Way to Deal. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  3. ^ "Bata Spring – Summer Launch". Miss Rusty. March 09, 2013. Retrieved 16 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ "Urban Footprints: Bata Cities". Behance. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  5. ^ "April 3, 1876: a future entrepreneur is born". Tracy A. Burns. Private Prague Guide. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  6. ^ "Shoes for everyone". Elaine Dong. The Star. Ocotber 5, 2008. Retrieved 18 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ "Bata Ltd". Answers.com. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  8. ^ "Comparision between Bata and Metro". Samee Zoe. Essays For Student. February 28, 2013. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  9. ^ "Shoes for everyone". Elaine Dong. The Star. Ocotber 5, 2008. Retrieved 18 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ "About Bata Shoes Museum" (PDF). Bata Shoe Museum. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
  11. ^ "The History of the Bata Company in Zlín". The Thomas Bata Foundation. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  12. ^ "Batawa (Eastern Ontario, K0K 1E0)". Rural Routes. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
  13. ^ "Bata Shoes Headquarters". Urban Exploration Resource. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  14. ^ "Theresienstadt memorial archive "Tom Stoppard Discloses his Past"". Center for Educational Technology. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
  15. ^ "And now the real thing". The Guardian. June 22, 2002. Retrieved 22 March 2013.
  16. ^ Dwork, Deborah; van Pelt, Robert Jan, Holocaust a History, W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 2002. ISBN 0-393-051888 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum-9
  17. ^ Engle Schafft, Gretchen, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich, University of Illinois Press, 2004. ISBN 0-252-02930-5
  18. ^ Dwork, Deborah; van Pelt, Robert Jan, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc. ISBN 0-393- 03933-1
  19. ^ "Bta Shoes customers throughout the world swear blind it's domestic brand". Nicky Godding. Shopping Centres Today. Noember 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  20. ^ "Welcome to Bata-ville". Steve Rose. June 19, 2006. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  21. ^ "Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre". Bata. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  22. ^ "Bata Shoe Factory". Kilduffs. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  23. ^ "Road film follows shoe empire". BBC News. August 28, 2005. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  24. ^ "Vsichni dobrí rodáci". IMDb. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  25. ^ "Review: A Slovak-Arizona journey". Susan Elderkin. October 8, 2001. Retrieved 18 March 2013.

Notes

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Media related to Bata Shoes at Wikimedia Commons

Category:Clothing retailers Category:Companies established in 1894 Category:Shoe companies of Switzerland Category:Zlín

bn:???? cs:Baťa de:Bata (Konzern) es:Bata (empresa) eo:Bata (konzerno) fr:Bata (entreprise) hi:???? ???? id:Bata (perusahaan) it:Bata (azienda) ms:Bata nl:Bata (bedrijf) pl:Bata (przedsiêbiorstwo) ru:Baťa sk:Baťa sr:Obuæa Bata fi:Bata Shoes sv:Bata vi:Bata (giay)

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