Bata(Company)

Bata Limited (also known as the Bata Shoe Organization) is a Canadian

owned multinational footwear and fashion accessory manufacturer and retailer based in Lausanne,
Switzerland. A family-owned business, the company is organized into three business units: Bata,
Bata Industrials and AW Lab. The company has a retail presence of over 5,300 shops in more than
70 countries and production facilities in 18 countries.

Origins And History

Foundation

The T. & A. Bata Shoe Company was founded on 24 August 1894 in the Moravian town of Zlin,
Austria-Hungary (today the Czech Republic) by Tomas Bata, his brother Antonín and his sister
Anna, whose family had been cobblers for generations. The company employed 10 full-time
employees with a fixed work schedule and a regular weekly wage, a rare find in its time.

Tomas, Antonin and Anna Bata

In the summer of 1895, Tomas was facing financial difficulties. 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. Four years later, Bata installed its first steam-driven
machines, beginning a period of rapid modernization. In 1904, Tomas read a newspaper article about
some machines being made in America. Therefore, he took three workers and journeyed to Lynn, a
shoemaking city outside Boston, in order to study and understand the American system of mass
production. After six months he returned to Zlin and he 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. Its success helped fuel the
company’s growth. After Antonin's death in 1908, Tomas brought two of his younger brothers, Jan
and Bohus, 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. Bata shoes were considered to be excellent
quality, and were available in more styles than had ever been offered before. By 1912, Bata was
employing 600+ full-time workers, plus another several hundred who worked out of their homes in
neighboring villages.

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 Bata’s employees increased ten times. The
company opened 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 hard hit. 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 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).

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, Bata was expanding as demand for the
inexpensive shoes grew rapidly. The Bata Shoe Company increased production and hired more
workers. Zlín became a veritable factory town, a "Bataville" 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, "Batamen", and their families had at
their disposal all the necessary everyday life services, including housing, shops, schools, and
hospital.
The T. & A. Bata Shoe Company

Bata's Skyscraper
 Batovka shoe

Bata in Zlín

Bata employee housing

1922 advertising
 Bata store in the 1920s

Bata store in the 1920s

Foreign growth

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), forestry (1918), newspaper publishing (1918), brick
manufacturing (1918), wood processing (1919), the rubber industry
(1923), the construction industry (1924), railway and air transport TOMAS BATA
(1924), book publishing (1926), the 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.
In 1924, Tomas Bata displayed his business acumen by calculating how much turnover he needed to
make with his annual plan, weekly plans and daily plans. Bata 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 Bata prices: numbers ending with a nine rather than with a whole number. His
business skyrocketed. Soon Bata 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 per cent. 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 Bata School of Work and introduced the
five-day work week. In 1930 he established a stunning shoe museum that maps shoe production from
the earliest times to the contemporary age throughout the world. By 1931 there were factories in
Germany, England, the Netherlands, Poland and in other countries.
In 1932, at the age of 56, Tomas Bata died in a plane crash during takeoff under bad weather
conditions at Zlín Airport. 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 the founder'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.
The Bata company was apparently the first big enterprise to systematically utilise aircraft for
company purposes, including rapid transport of personnel on business like delivery of maintenance
men and spares to a location where needed, originating the practice of business flying.

Jan Antonin Bata

At the time of Tomas's death, the Bata company employed 16,560 people, maintained 1,645 shops
and 25 enterprises. Jan Antonin Bata, 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 7500 Batamen. The Bata model fitted anywhere, creating, for example, canteens for
vegetarians in India. In exchange, the demands on workers were as strong 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 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.
As of 1934, the firm owned 300 stores in North America (after World War II, many of these stores
were rebranded with the "Barrett Shoes" trademark), a thousand in Asia, more than 4,000 in Europe.
In 1938, the Group 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.

World War II
Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Bata helped re-post his Jewish employees to
branches of his firm all over the world. Germany occupied the remaining part of pre-war
Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939; Jan Antonín Bata then spent a short time in jail but was then able
to leave the country with his family. Jan Antonín Bata stayed in America 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 immigrated to Brazil. After the war ended, the
Czechoslovak authorities tried Bata 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 Benes.
In occupied Europe a Bata shoe factory was connected to the concentration camp Auschwitz-
Birkenau. The first slave labour efforts in Auschwitz involved the Bata shoe factory. In 1942 a small
camp was established to support the Bata shoe factory at Chełmek with Jewish slave labourers.
Post-war

The demolished Bata International Centre was the global headquarters during its entire
existence(1965-2004).

Tomas's 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, 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 mother company, and
ownership of plants in Bohemia and Moravia was transferred to another member of the family.
After World War II, governments in Czechoslovakia, 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 England would become the
service headquarters of the Bata Shoe Organisation. Now based in the West, Thomas J. Bata, along
with many Czechoslovakian expatriates, began to rebuild the business.
From its new base, 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.
Between 1946 and 1960, 25 new factories were built and 1,700 company shops were opened. In
1962, the company had production and sales activities in 79 countries.
In 1964, the Bata moved their headquarters to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1965 moved again, into
an ultra-modern building, the Bata International Centre. The building, located on Wynford Drive, in
suburban North York, Ontario, Canada, was designed by architect John B. Parkin.
In 1979, the Bata family established the Bata Shoe Museum Foundation to operate an international
centre for footwear research and house of a collection that was started by Sonja Bata, Thomas' wife,
in the 1940s. As she travelled the world on business with her husband, she gradually built up a
collection of traditional footwear from the areas she was visiting.
Bata was one of the official sponsors of the 1986 FIFA World Cup held in Mexico. Bata also
sponsored 2014 Electronic Sports World Cup.

Czechoslovakia after 1989

After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Thomas J. Bata 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

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, and 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 G. Bata, grandson of Tomas. The notable Bata
headquarters building in Toronto was vacated and eventually demolished too much controversy. In
2007, the Athletes World chain was sold, ending Bata retail operations in Canada. As of 2013, 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 (Tomas Jan Bata) 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 30,000
people, operates more than 5,300 shops, and manages 23 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 India has five factories and two tanneries. The Mokameh
Ghat tannery in Bihar (1952) is the second largest in Asia.
The business is organised in five regions: Africa (with regional office based in Nairobi), Asia Pacific
(with regional office based in Singapore), LatAm (with regional office based in Santiago de Chile),
South Asia (with regional office based in New Delhi) and Europe/Developed Markets (with regional
office based in Padova, Italy).