28-09-2013, 12:46 PM
Bata Shoes
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INTRODUCTION
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. 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 organization 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 in Zlín (then Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the Czech Republic) by Tomáš Baťa (Czech pronunciation: [ˈtomaːʃ ˈbaca]), 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.
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 duringvoucher 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.”
Building
Designed by Raymond Moriyama and completed in 1995, the structure sits on the southwest corner of Bloor and St. George Streets in downtown Toronto. Its form is derived from the idea of the museum as a container. Taking this further and associating it with footwear, Moriyama stated that the building is meant to evoke an opening shoe box, realised in a somewhat deconstructivist form with its canted walls and its copper-clad roof offset from the walls of the building below in an interesting play of volume and void. The main facade (north) along Bloor Street pinches inward to where the entrance, in the form of a glass shard, emerges, creating a more generous forecourt. This glass protrusion is one end of a multi-level 'cut' through the building which contains the main vertical circulation, providing a clear view through the building to the three-story faceted glass wall, designed by Lutz Haufschild, on the south facade. The entire stone volume appears to float above a ribbon of glass display windows on street level, and its vast expanse of limestone glows in the late afternoon sunlight.
A short summery about Bata Shoe Museum
Requested by Sonya Bata who had been painstakingly gathering a special collection of artifact since 1940s, Raymond Moriyama, a Japanese-Canadian architect took the responsibility of designing and construction of Bata Shoe Museum project after meeting Mrs. Bata and her collection. The building is 3 stories above ground and 2 underground which is made out of limestone covered by a clad lid plane as the roof to protect the historical treasures. The idea came from the shoeboxes that were protecting the shoes from the dust and light. The transparent entrance is also another interesting point of the building looking like it is sticking out of the hinged walls facing north. The reason of the hinged walls was to create more space for the pedestrians. The building is blending in with the surrounding buildings because of the colors of the limestone and is giving the last touches of class to the neighborhood.