B1-32 · Baťa and the Shoe Town of Zlín

Baťa and the Shoe Town of Zlín

Look at the label inside your shoes. If it says "Bata", you are wearing a piece of Czech history. The story of this company began in 1894 in Zlín, a small town in Moravia.

A small workshop. Tomáš Baťa came from a family of shoemakers. When he was eighteen, he decided to start his own business with his brother Antonín and his sister Anna. They had ten workers and very little money. In the first years, the business almost failed. But Tomáš refused to give up. He traveled to the USA, where he watched how factories worked with assembly lines, and he brought the idea back home.

The biggest in the world. Baťa's idea was to make good shoes cheaply, so that ordinary people could afford them. By the 1930s, the company employed tens of thousands of people and was the biggest exporter of shoes in the world. It had factories and shops on several continents.

A town built for workers. Baťa didn't stop at building factories. He wanted his workers to live well, too. The company built thousands of small houses of red brick, each with a garden, as well as schools, a hospital, a cinema and sports grounds. The buildings were functional and modern, and the whole town was planned like one big machine. Many young people came to study at the Baťa School of Work, where they spent the day working and the evening learning. Baťa believed in rewarding hard work: workers shared part of the profit, but they were also expected to follow strict rules.

An office in an elevator. The most famous building in Zlín is Building 21, finished in 1938. At 77.5 meters, it was one of the tallest buildings in Europe at the time. The director's office was inside a large elevator, so he could go up and down and visit any floor without leaving his desk. You can still try riding in it today.

After Tomáš. Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash in 1932. His half-brother Jan Antonín continued running the company. After 1945, the Communists took the factories, and Zlín was even renamed Gottwaldov. Tomáš's son, Thomas J. Bata, had to start again abroad, mainly in Canada. Today, Bata is an international company with its main office in Switzerland, and it still sells millions of pairs of shoes every year.

If you visit Zlín, remember to see the red-brick houses and Building 21. And next time you buy shoes, try to remember where it all started.