Editorial Invest in Slovakia
When you hear his name, you immediately associate it with shoes. He started out young, died a tragic death at the age of 56. Today, his company has stores in more than 100 countries with 70,000 employees. It sells about 300 million pairs of shoes a year. Well, did you know this about Bata?
1. He had a half-brother, Jan Antonín.
2. He was at least from the 9th generation of Zlín shoemakers.
3. He used the leather scraps to make small shoes for dolls, which he then sold in the market.
4. At the age of ten, he tragically lost his mother. He and his mother are said to have buried a loving household. This loss scarred them all for life.
5. At the age of 14, he could only read as much as he had learned from a textbook. It was at this age that he got his hands on his first book - Pictorial History of the Czech Nation.
6. At 15 he ran away from home. He went to Vienna to see his sister Anna. Here he was taught a hard lesson about independent business. He started making slippers, but as he admitted, he didn't find out first if there would be any interest in the slippers. Besides, he didn't have a business licence and that's why he had a run-in with the police.
7. With a suitcase full of his father's samples, he took the train on the road and tried his luck as a sales representative. He was only 16 years old.
8. Together with his siblings Anna and Jan Antonín, they founded a company in Zlín. They introduced measures unprecedented in small businesses at that time - regular working hours from 6 am to 6 pm with an hour lunch break and weekly salaries.
9. After a year, the joint trade of Tomáš and his siblings was indebted to an amount 90 times the company's assets.
10. His first real success was brought by the so-called "Bata shoes" - a mass-produced model of canvas shoes with a leather toe. Their low selling price, low cost and simplicity made them the perfect product.
11. He went to America to learn that way. During the voyage, he wrote down 688 questions about manufacturing that he wanted to find the answers to.
The 12th also inspired Henry Ford in America. In total, he made two visits to the USA, where he mainly studied the layout and technology of machines in production halls, but also production processes and management.
13. Before the start of the First World War he became the father of little Tommy. He went to Vienna to the War Ministry. He knew that the only way he and his staff could survive the hard times was to get an army contract. After a few days, he succeeded.
14. In Zlín, he founded schools that paid close attention to teaching students to calculate and take care of their finances. He wanted to make wealthy capitalists out of his employees.
15. The company built ️ in the city department stores, a hotel, a cinema, a large hospital, school buildings, science institutes, film studios, thousands of new apartments. This construction activity transformed Zlín into a super-modern industrial city.
16. He was involved not only in Czechoslovakia, but also abroad. Paradoxically, its greatest expansion was caused by the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s.
17. In 1932, it employed over 30,000 people, with companies operating in 54 countries on 4 continents. The world seemed to lie at his feet. Unfortunately, he never lived to see further expansion.
On July 12, 1932, he died tragically in a plane crash.
19. The system he built was so strong that even he himself was not indispensable in it.
20. A new feature of the management of the company was the so-called "profit-sharing", which some employees could earn based on the productivity of their department.
21. He was not only profit-oriented, he started to build the so-called Bat'a houses for his workers, which still form a significant part of the typical architecture of Zlín.
22. Popular are also the so-called "Bata prices", which always ended with a 9 and which were intended to evoke in the buyer the feeling of a more advantageous and cheaper purchase.
23. In 1923, he ran for mayor of Zlín with the slogan "I want to work for everyone. To fight against poverty." He won unchallenged.
24. He established factories in Switzerland, Germany, England, France, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, the USA and India.
25. Today, Bata is headquartered in Canada and continues to spread the legacy of its exceptional founder.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuKGHrIP3tg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnxIORaiV_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG_Fn2g2FWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRyDvKAwjmA
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