Bata Shoes

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.
Organized 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 organization has a retail presence of over 5200 retail
stores in more than 70 countries and production facilities in 18 countries.

Origins and history

Foundation
The T. & A. Baa Shoe Company was founded on the 24th of August 1894 in Zlin (then the AustroHungarian Empire, today the Czech Republic) by Tom Baa(Czech: [toma baca]), his brother
Antonn 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.
In the summer of 1895, Tom found himself facing financial difficulties, and debts abounded. To
overcome these serious setbacks, Tom 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 modernisation. In 1904,
Tom 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 Tom 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 companys growth. After Antonin's death in 1908, Tomas
brought two of his younger brothers, Jan and Bohu, 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 neighbouring 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 Baas employees increased ten times. The company
opened its own stores in Zln, 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. Tom Baa
responded to the crisis by cutting the price of Bata shoes in half. The companys 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 performancebased 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. Zln 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
a farming activities to cover both food and energy needs... Horizontal and vertical integration.
Workers, "Batamen", and their families had at their disposal all the necessary everyday life services:
housing, shops, schools, hospital, etc.

International 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), forest farming (1918), newspaper publishing (1918), brick manufacturing
(1918), wood processing (1919), the rubber industry (1923), the construction industry (1924), railway
and air transport (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 Tom Baa displayed his business acumen by figuring out how much turnover he needed to
make with his annual plan, weekly plans and daily plans. Baa 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 Baa prices numbers ending with a nine rather than with a whole number. His
business skyrocketed. Soon Baa 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 companys head factory was composed of 30 buildings. Then the
entrepreneur created educational organizations such as the Baa 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, Tom Baa died in a plane crash during take off under bad weather
conditions at Zln 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 their fathers 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 Baa company was apparently the
first big enterprise to systematically utilise aircraft for company purposes, including rapid transport of
lesser personnel on business like delivery of maintenance men and spares to a location where
needed, originating the practice of business flying.

Jan Antonn Baa

At the time of Tom's death, the Bata company employed 16,560 people, maintained 1,645 shops
and 25 enterprises. Jan Baa, following the plans laid down by Tom Baa 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[1] and went on to become Bata India Ltd. in 1973. Batanagar factory is the first Indian shoe
manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.[2]
As of 1934, the firm owned 300 stores in North America, 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.[citation needed]

Bata-villes[edit]
Company policy initiated under Tom Baa was to set up villages around the factories for the
workers and to supply schools and welfare. These villages include Batadorp in the Netherlands,
Baovany (present-day Partiznske) and Svit in Slovakia, Baov (now Bahk, 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 Mhlin, Switzerland, Bataville in Lorraine, France, Batawa in
Canada, East Tilbury[3] 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.[4]
The British "Bata-ville" in East Tilbury inspired the documentary film Bata-ville: We Are Not Afraid of
the Future.[5]

World War II
Just before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Baa helped re-post his Jewish employees to
branches of his firm all over the world. [6][7] Germany occupied the remaining part of pre-war
Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939; Jan Antonn Baa then spent a short time in jail but was then
able to leave the country with his family. Jan Antonn Baa stayed in America from 19391940, 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 Baa 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 Bene.
In occupied Europe a Bata shoe factory was connected to the concentration camp AuschwitzBirkenau.[8] The first slave labour efforts in Auschwitz involved the Bata shoe factory.[9] In 1942 a

small camp was established to support the Bata shoe factory at Chemek with Jewish slave
labourers.

Post-war
Tom'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. 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.
In 1964, the Bata Shoe Organisation moved their headquarters to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and
in 1965 moved again, into an ultra-modern building, the Bata International Centre. The building,
located on Wynford Drive, in suburban North York was designed by architect John B. Parkin.
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. Baa arrived as soon as December 1989.
The Czechoslovak government offered him the opportunity to invest in the ailing governmentowned 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 manufacturing
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. 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 Tom Baa. The 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. [12] 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 Mr. Bata remained active in its operations
and carried business cards listing his title as chief shoe salesman. In 2008, Thomas John 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,
[13]

operates more than 5,000 retail stores, manages 27 production facilities and a retail presence in

over 90 countries mostly in Asia, Europe and Australia. Bata has a strong presence in countries like
India where it has been in existence since 1931. Bata India has five factories and two tanneries. The
Mokameh Ghat tannery in Bihar (1952) is the second largest in Asia. [14]Singapore is home to BATA
Asia Pacific and Africa operations and manages close to 3,000 outlets in the region. In Singapore,
there are more than 40 stores.