Tomáš Baťa

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businessman Tomáš Baťa

Tomáš Baťa (born April 3, 1876 in Zlín, Moravia - died July 12, 1932) was the founder of Bata Shoe Organization, one of the world's biggest multinational retailers, manufacturers and distributors of footwear and accessories.

Tomáš Baťa established the organization in Zlín on August 24, 1894, with his brother and sister as partners in the firm. 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. With the introduction of factory-style production and long distance retailing, Baťa modernized the shoe-making industry and the company surged ahead in production and profits right from its nascent years.

Eventually, Baťa obtained sole control over the company. World War I created a booming demand for military shoes, and the company quickly became one of the prime brands. Tomas also exhibited his business acumen, with his initiatives towards producing low-cost shoes for the general public, whose purchasing power had been significantly reduced in the aftermath of the war. He also set up factories and companies in other countries like Poland, Yugoslavia, India, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the USA. These factories were made self-sufficient and autonomous in their design, production and distribution strategies, in a move to focus them towards catering to the local population. By the early 1930s, the Baťa enterprise and Czechoslovakia were the world's leading footwear exporters.

Baťa is also widely regarded as a businessman with an acute sense of social consciousness. He is quoted by many as one of the first pioneers of employee welfare and social advancement programs. He is credited with efforts to modernize his hometown providing the people with employment, and housing facilities, making him a very popular citizen in the town. He also became the mayor of Zlín.

Tomáš Baťa stated:

Let's bear in mind that the chances to multiply wealth are unlimited. All people can become rich. There is an error in our understandings - that all people cannot become equally rich. Wealth can not exist where the people are busy with mutual cheating, have no time for creating values and wealth. It is remarkable that we can find the greatest number of wealthy tradesmen and a population on a high standard of living in countries with a high level of business morality. On the other hand, we can find poor tradesmen and entrepreneurs and an impoverished population in countries with a low standard of business morality. This is natural because these people concentrate on cheating one another instead of trying to create value.

We are granting you the profit share not because we feel a need to give money to the people just out of the goodness of the heart. No, we are aiming at other goals by this step. By this measure we want to reach a further decrease of production costs. We want to reach the situation that the shoes are cheaper and workers earn even more. We think that our products are still too expensive and worker's salary too low.^[1]

Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash in 1932. After his demise, his family continued to be at the helm of affairs. Thomas J. Bata fled to Canada after the war and relaunched the company which today operates in 68 countries.

1 Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation
2 In fiction
3 See also
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Baťa's leadership for quality and innovation

In a scholarly study of Tomáš Baťa as a leader and business innovator Dr. Myron Tribus states:

When I first began this paper, I intended to demonstrate that what Bata did is a superb illustration of what is now called "quality management". The record shows that Tomas Bata did indeed preced modern "quality management" practices by at least half a century. If we look only at that side of the man, we must conclude that he was the first to use quality as a way to lower cost at the same time as he created customer delight.

However, as I delved more deeply into Bata's management methods, it became clear that looking at his work through such a lens gives much too narrow a focus. It is possible, of course, to analyze Bata's work as an example of what W. Edwards Deming has called his "System of Profound Knowledge". However, the level of abstraction at which Dr. Deming describes this system makes it capable of encompassing many different activities and while it provides great generality, it does not provide a focus on what was unique about Bata. I have chosen a less abstract approach, concentrating on the Bata contributions I thought would be of greatest value in contemporary management. My objective is to find the most important lessons that the Bata system of management can teach today's entrepreneurs.^[2]

[edit] In fiction

Novel Botostroj, 1933 (The Shoe Machine) by Svatopluk Turek portrays Tomáš Baťa as strong willed dictator who sacrificed himself and all people around for success of the company. After being published, Baťa family sued for defamation and tried to stop further publishing.