The Bata Corporation (known as Bata, and in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, known as Baťa, ) is a multinational footwear, apparel and fashion accessories manufacturer and retailer of Moravian (Czech) origin, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2017, the global marketing department moved to Prague to further centralize the company.[5]
A family-owned business for over 125 years, the company is organized into three business units: Bata, Bata Industrials (safety shoes) and AW Lab (sports style). Bata is a portfolio company with more than 20 brands and labels, such as Bata, North Star, Power, Bubblegummers, sprint, Weinbrenner, Sandak, and Toughees. In 2004, the Guinness World Records named Bata the "Largest Shoe Seller and Manufacturer" of all time, as the company has sold over 14 billion pairs of shoes since its inception.[6]
Origins and history
Foundation
The T. & A. Baťa Shoe Company was founded on 21 September 1894[7] in the Moravian town of Zlín, Austria-Hungary (today in the Czech Republic), by Tomáš Baťa, 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.
In the summer of 1895, Tomáš was facing financial difficulties.[8] To overcome these setbacks, he decided to sew shoes from canvas instead of leather. This type of shoe became very popular and helped the company grow to 50 employees.[9] Four years later, Baťa installed its first steam-driven machines, beginning a period of rapid modernisation. In 1904, Tomáš read a newspaper article about machines being made in the United States such as Jan Ernst Matzeliger's automatic laster. Therefore, he took three workers and journeyed to Lynn, a city outside Boston that was then the center of the world footwear industry, in order to study and understand the American system of mass production. After six months he returned to Zlín and he introduced mechanized production techniques that allowed the Baťa Shoe Company to become one of the first mass producers of shoes in Europe. Its first mass product, the "Baťovky," was a leather and textile shoe for working people that was notable for its simplicity, style, light weight and affordable price. Its success helped fuel the company's growth, and after Antonín's death in 1908, Tomáš brought two of his younger brothers, Jan and Bohuš, into the business. Initial export sales and the first ever sales agencies began in Germany in 1909, followed by the Balkans and the Middle East. Baťa shoes were considered to be excellent quality, and were available in more styles than had ever been offered before. By 1912, Baťa was employing 1500 full-time workers, plus another several hundred who worked out of their homes in neighbouring villages.[10]
World War I
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 opened its own stores in Zlín, Prague, Liberec, Vienna and Plzeň, among other towns.
In the global economic slump that followed World War I, the newly created country of Czechoslovakia was particularly hard hit. With its currency devalued by 75%, demand for products dropped, production was cut back, and unemployment was at an all-time high. Tomáš Baťa responded to the crisis by cutting the price of Bata shoes in half.[4] The company's workers agreed to a temporary 40 percent reduction in wages; in turn, Baťa provided food, clothing, and other necessities at half-price.[4] He also introduced one of the first profit-sharing initiatives, transforming all employees into associates with a shared interest in the company's success (today's equivalent of performance-based incentives and stock options).[4]
Shoemaker to the world
Consumer response to the price drop was dramatic. While most competitors were forced to close because of the crisis in demand between 1923 and 1925, Baťa was expanding as demand for the inexpensive shoes grew rapidly.[4] The Baťa Shoe Company increased production and hired more workers. Zlín became a veritable factory town, a "Baťaville" covering several hectares. 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 pulp and cardboard factory (for production of packaging), a fabric factory (for lining for shoes and socks), a shoe-shine factory, a power plant and farming activities to cover food and energy needs. Workers, "Baťamen", and their families had at their disposal all the necessary everyday life services, including housing, shops, schools, and hospital.[11]
Baťa combined the automated efficiency of the factory with social welfare; the early experiments in collectivism and profit-sharing laid the groundwork for a reinvention of industrial management. Not only did the company build employee housing, schools, shops and a hospital, but it also offered recreational amenities — everything from a cinema, library, department store, dance halls, and espresso bars to a swimming pool and airfield, all courtesy of Bata Shoes.[12][11]
Diversification and foreign growth
Baťa 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 and agriculture (1917), forestry, newspaper publishing and brick manufacturing (1918), wood processing (1919), the rubber industry (1923), construction industry, railway, and air transport (1924), book publishing (1926), the film industry and food processing (1927), chemical production (1928), tyre manufacturing and insurance (1930), textile production (1931), motor and sea transport, and coal mining (1932), airplane manufacturing (1934), synthetic fibre production (1935), and river transport (1938).[8] In 1923 the company boasted 112 branches.
In 1924, Tomáš Baťa displayed his business acumen by calculating 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. His business skyrocketed. 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.[11] By the end of 1928, the company's head factory was composed of 30 buildings. Bat'a then created educational organizations such as the Baťa School of Work and introduced the five-day work week.
Jan Antonín Baťa and international expansion
At the time of Tomáš's death, the Baťa company employed 16,560 people, maintained 1,645 shops and 25 enterprises. Jan Antonín Baťa, following the plans laid down by Tomáš Baťa 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 7500 Baťamen. The Baťa model fitted anywhere, creating, for example, canteens for vegetarians in India. In exchange, the demands on workers were the same as in Europe: "Be courageous. The best in the world is not good enough for us. Loyalty gives us prosperity & happiness. Work is a moral necessity!" Bata India was incorporated as Bata Shoe Company Pvt. Ltd in 1931[16] and went on to become Bata India Ltd. in 1973. The Batanagar factory was the first Indian shoe manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.[17]
As of 1934, the firm owned 300 stores in North America (after World War II, many of theses stores were rebranded with the "Barrett Shoes" trademark), a thousand in Asia, more than 4,000 in Europe.
Bata-villes
Company policy initiated under Tomáš 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, Baťovany (present-day Partizánske) and Svit in Slovakia, Baťov (now Bahňák, part of Otrokovice) in the Czech Republic, Borovo-Bata (now Borovo Naselje, part of Vukovar in Croatia then in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Bata Park in Möhlin, Switzerland, Bataville in Lorraine, France, Batawa (Ontario) in Canada, Batatuba (São Paulo), Batayporã and Bataguassu (Mato Grosso do Sul) in Brazil, East Tilbury[19] 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.[20]
World War II
Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Baťa helped re-post his Jewish employees to branches of his firm all over the world.[22][23] 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 United States from 1939–1940, but when the USA 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 was put on British and US black lists for doing business with the Axis powers, and in 1941 he emigrated to Brazil. After the war ended, the Czechoslovak authorities tried Baťa as a traitor, saying he had failed to support the anti-Nazi resistance. In 1947 he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison. The company's Czechoslovak assets were also seized by the state – several months before the communists came to power. 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.
In occupied Europe, a Bata shoe factory was connected to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.[24]
Post-war: rebuilding
Tomáš's son Thomas J. Bata, manager of the buying department of the British Bata Company, was unable to return until after the war. He was sent to Canada by his uncle Jan, to become the Vice President of the Bata Import and Export Company of Canada, which was founded in a company town named Batawa, opened in 1939. Foreign subsidiaries were separated from the parent company, and ownership of plants in Bohemia and Moravia was transferred to another member of the family.
After World War II, governments in Czechoslovakia,[4] East Germany, Poland and Yugoslavia confiscated and nationalized Bata factories, stripping Bata of its Eastern European assets.
In 1945, the decision was taken that Bata Development Limited in Great Britain would become the service headquarters of the Bata Shoe Organisation. Now based in the West, Thomas J. Bata, along with many Czechoslovak expatriates, began to rebuild the business.[4]
From its new base, the company gradually rebuilt itself, expanding into new markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, Australia, 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.
Czechoslovakia after 1989
Thomas J. Baťa returned in December 1989, soon after the Velvet Revolution in November. 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 its decline, and in 2000 Svit went bankrupt.[35]
Present
After the global economic changes of the 1990s, the company closed a number of its factories in developed countries and focused on expanding retail business. Bata moved out of Canada in several steps. In 2000, it closed its Batawa factory, then in 2001, it closed its Bata retail stores, retaining its "Athletes World" retail chain.
In 2004, the Bata headquarters were moved to Lausanne, Switzerland and leadership was transferred to Thomas (Tomáš) G. Bata, grandson of the founder. The notable Bata headquarters building in Toronto was vacated and eventually demolished to much controversy. In 2007, the Athletes World chain was sold, ending Bata retail operations in Canada.[36] Bata maintains the headquarters for its "Power" brand of footwear in Toronto. The Bata Shoe Museum, founded by Sonja Bata, and operated by a charitable foundation, is also located in Toronto.
Although no longer chairman of the company, the elder Bata remained active in its operations and carried business cards listing his title as "chief shoe salesman." On 1 September 2008 Thomas John Bata (Thomáš Jan Baťa) died at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto at the age of 93.
Bata estimates that it serves more than 1 million customers per day, employing over 32,000 people,[37] operates more than 5,300 shops, manages 21 production facilities and a retail presence in over 70 countries across the five continents. Bata has a strong presence in countries including India where it has been present since 1931.
Bata brands
- Bata/Baťa
- North Star (urban shoes)
- Weinbrenner (outdoor shoes)
- Bubblegummers (children's shoes)
- Power (athletic shoes)
- Bata Industrials (work & safety)
- Toughees (school shoes)
- Verlon (school shoes)
- Teener (school shoes)
- B-First (school shoes)
- Footin (school shoes)
- Patapata (flip flops)
- Marie Claire (women's shoes)
- Leena (women's shoes)
- Tomy Takkies (urban shoes)
Bata brand extensions
- Ambassador (classic men's shoes)
- Bata 3D (urban sneakers)
- Bata Comfit (comfort shoes)
- Bata Flexible (comfort shoes)
- Bata Red Label (trendy shoes)
Selected factories
Czech Republic Slovakia Europe Brazil Other
- Zlín
- Otrokovice – Baťov (1930–1934)[39]
- Třebíč (1933)[40]
- Zruč nad Sázavou (1938)[41]
- Sezimovo Ústí (1939)[42]
- Bošany
See also
- Baťa's Skyscraper, Zlín
- Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada
Further reading
- Bata: Shoemaker to the World by Thomas J Bata (1990) ISBN 978-0773724167
External links
- corporate website
- Bata Memories history of Bata community in Essex, UK
- "Bata-ville – We are not afraid of the future": somewhere.org.uk/bata-ville / bata-ville.com, Somewhere, 2007 United Kingdom "Against the backdrop of economic regeneration, former employees of two now closed UK Bata factories are led on a unique journey through Bata's legacy and across a changing Europe."
- Bata Industrials
References
- Thomas G. Bata globalfamilybusinessaward.com, retrieved 28 August 2018^
- WHO: Thomas George Bata, Chairman, who's the third generation Bata family member to lead the company 1 September 2017, retrieved 28 August 2018^
- Bata Leadership – Executive Team & Governance