Jan Antonín Baťa

Bata company Basic Facts Bata is a family-owned global footwear and fashion accessory manufacturer and retailer with acting headquarters located in Lausanne, Switzerland. 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. In its history the Bata has sold more than 14 billion pairs of shoes and was awarded the Guinness World Record as the "Largest Shoe Retailer and Manufacturer".

Foundation The company was founded under the name A. Baťa in 1894 by Tomáš Baťa , 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. In the summer of 1895, Tomáš found himself facing financial difficulties, and debts abounded. To overcome these serious 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 Tomáš 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. Its success helped fuel the company’s growth

and, 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 Baťa’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 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 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 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 actvities 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 In 1924 Tomáš Baťa 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. 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. 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. 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, Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash during take off under bad weather conditions at Zlín Airport. Control of the company was passed to his halfbrother, 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.

Jan Antonín Baťa 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 7500 Batamen. The Bata model fitted anywhere, creating, for example, canteens for vegetarians in India and respecting the caste system. 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!" 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.

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 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 1939–1940, 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. At 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.

After war. After war governments in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and Yugoslavia confiscated and nationalized Bata factories 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. 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.

Czechoslovakia after 1989 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 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, M. Thomas John Bata died aged 93 at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto at the age of 93 years old. M. Bata’s son, Thomas George Bata, became chairman and chief executive of the company in 2001, but the elder Mr. 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, employs over 30,000 people, operates more than 5,000 retail stores, manages 26 production facilities and a retail presence in over 90 countries.

Bata in the world

Tomáš Baťa Tomáš Baťa was a Czech entrepreneur,founder of the Baťa Shoes company, one of the world's biggest multinational retailers, manufacturers and distributors of footwear and accessories. His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company. Though the organization was newly established, the family had a long history of shoemaking, spanning eight generations and over three hundred years. This heritage helped boost the popularity of his new firm very quickly. In 1904 Baťa worked on an assembly line in the United States and brought his acquaintance with the method back to Zlín. With modern production and long distance retailing, Baťa modernized the shoemaking industry. By the early 1930s, under Tomas Bata's leadership the Baťa enterprise and Czechoslovakia were the world's leading footwear exporters. Tomas and his brother Jan together were responsible for the design of the

Bata industrial system. For example, under Jan's administration in Zlin, he developed and built more square meters of buildings than under Tomas' time. 12th July 1932 Tomáš Baťa died with his pilot Henry Brouck in an accident while in his personal aircraft Junkers F 13 flew to Switzerland to attend the opening of a new branch in the town Möhlin.

Jan Antonín Baťa Jan Antonín Baťa, called The King of Shoes was a Czech shoe manufacturer halfbrother of Tomáš Baťa. After his half-brother Tomas' death (1932) Jan Antonin Bata headed the Baťa company and in 1931 it Baťa a.s. based in Zlín. 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 7500 Batamen. The Bata model fitted anywhere, creating, for example, canteens for vegetarians in India and respecting the caste system. 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!" 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.