I found an interesting company by the name of Bata that was one of the first shoe manufacturers in the world. It was founded in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1894. In its early days, a team of stitchers and shoemakers decided to create footwear for not just neighbors, but for distant retail merchants.

By 1905, just 9 years after it was founded, the company was producing 2200 pairs per day, and employed resourceful imaginations, skilled hands and modern machinery to keep up with demand. Innovative shoes styles were developed with new customer-sensitive ways to promote them. Despite the outbreak of the first world war, material shortages, manpower shortages, and cartels; sales increased to about two million pairs per year by 1917 and rust remover manufactures even began to sprout up.

In the town of Zlin, the company built housing, schools, and hospitals around the factory to help with employee living. It also provided inexpensive rent and food during very difficult times when others had no help whatsoever, because the founder, Tomas Bata, always believed business to be a public service.

After World War I, Tomas conceived a plan to adjust to post-war economic difficulties by reducing the price of shoes. Employees supported the plan with hard work. Soon stores were flooded with customers.

Early exports went to the USA, Europe and North Africa. In the1920's new companies opened in Poland, Yugoslavia, Holland, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the USA. By the early 1930's the company was the leading footwear exporter in the entire world. Their advanced manufacturing machine shop virtually eliminated production down-time and contributed significant breakthroughs in footwear technology.

"Autonomous workshops and departments" allowed employees to contribute ideas, and affect their own earnings by performing on behalf of department profitability.

New companies were established in France, Austria, Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland, Egypt, Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, Hungary, Italy, Indonesia, Singapore and India; before Tomas Bata died prematurely in an airplane crash in 1932.

The first foreign plants were built at Möhlin, Switzerland and Calcutta, India. Plants and surrounding villages were often modeled after Zlin. Under the guidance of a young Thomas J. Bata and others, many foreign sales organizations were created and additional plants established at an average rate of at least two per year until the 1960's. This platform lead the way for other wholesale shoes entrepreneurship for other companies.  

At the beginning of World War II Bata employed 42,000 people. World headquarters moved to the UK. And then the Bata International Centre was in Toronto, Canada. It has remained a lean head office; continuing a philosophy of decentralization. After the war, Bata companies in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere were nationalized by "Communist" governments. Company rebuilding was complicated by a significantly changing consumer, but then mainstays such as the ladies pump became very popular and the company flourished everywhere.

Bata developed the Direct Vulcanization Process ("DVP") and other breakthrough technologies in cold weather, work foot-wear, etc. The original patent is held by Bata for fastening textile to PVC. This initiated athletic footwear, the industry's most successful segment in history.

As Thomas G. Bata prepared to accept responsibility for managing world-wide operations, the father and son team began re-defining the organization. During the 70's, 80's and 90's, the world manufacturing base for footwear has shifted to developing countries; the Pacific rim and especially to China. New strategies have been guided by the founding principles of focusing on customers, marketing and employees. Branded products, innovative retail store concepts, lifestyle merchandising, non-footwear products and participative retailing have been introduced.

Annually the company continues to produce about 170 million pairs and sells about 270 million pairs, through companies in more than 60 countries. We have been serving the world since 1894.