| Tomáš Baťa | |
|---|---|
Tomáš Baťa (Svit, Slovakia) |
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| Born | 3 April 1876 Zlín, Moravia, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 12 July 1932 (aged 56) Otrokovice, Czechoslovakia |
| Occupation | Founder of Bata Shoes |
| Children | Thomas J. Bata |
Tomáš Baťa (Czech pronunciation: [ˈtomaːʃ ˈbaca]) (3 April 1876 Zlín, Moravia – 12 July 1932) was a Czech entrepreneur, founder of Bata Shoes company, one of the world's biggest multinational retailers, manufacturers and distributors of footwear and accessories.
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Tomáš Baťa established the organization in Zlín on 24 August 1894 with 800 Austrian gulden, some $320, inherited from his mother. His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company. 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. In 1904 Baťa worked on an assembly line in the United States and brought his acquaintance with the method back to Zlín.[1] With modern production and long distance retailing, Baťa modernized the shoemaking industry and the company surged ahead in production and profits right from its nascent years.
Eventually, Tomas Baťa obtained sole control over the company in 1908 after his brother Antonín Baťa died from tuberculosis. After Antonin's death, Tomas brought into the company two of his younger brothers, Jan and Bohus into the business. World War I created a booming demand for military shoes, and the company quickly became one of the major contemporary footwear brands. During the interwar period Tomas Baťa again visited the New World to observe progress at the River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Upon his return the company began to look towards decentralizing operations.[1] Baťa 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. Factories and companies were set up in other countries including Poland, Yugoslavia, India, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States. 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.[1] By the early 1930s, under Tomas Bata's leadership the Baťa enterprise and Czechoslovakia were the world's leading footwear exporters. Tomas and his brother Jan together were responsible for the design of the Bata industrial system.. Although Tomas has been better promoted for the development of the Bata System, Jan's contributions were equal to those of his brother Tomas. For example, under Jan's administration in Zlin, he developed built more square meters of buildings than under Tomas' time.
Czech Republic: 1. Zlin (Tomas and Jan Bata)
Bata cities and factories built under first ten years of Jan Antonin Bata's administration below:
2. Otrokovice – Batov, Czech(1930–1934), 3. Trebíc, Czech (1933), 4. Slovakia Bata Canal 60 Kilometers (1935) 5. Nové Zámky (1935), 6. Zruc nad Sázavou (1938), 7. Sezimovo Ústí (1939)
Slovakia: 8. Bošany, Slovakia (1931–1934) [factory and small colony] 9. SVIT, Slovakia (1934) 10. Liptovský sv. Mikuláš, (1938) [factory and small colony] 11. Batovany (today Partizánske, 1938)
Europe: 12. Best The Netherlands, (1933–1934) 13. East Tilbury (England, 1933–1934) 14. Hellocourt , France, (1933–1935) 15. Vernon, France (1935) 16. Neuvic, Dordogne, France (1939) 17. Belgium (1937) 18. Borovo, Croatia (1931–1935) 19. Möhlin, Switzerland (1933) 20. Chelmek, Poland (1932) 21. Martfü, Hungary (1941)
Outside Europe: India - In 1931, Tomas Bata, the Czech shoe tycoon, established his first Indian operation at Konnagar. By 1936 the Konnegar plan was phased out. In May 1931, Tomas sold his business interests to his brother Jan Antonin Bata who established Batanagar, Bata's first permanent shoe factory in India. The company first established itself in India in 1931 by renting a building to start an experimental shoe production plant in Konnagar, West Bengal with 75 Czech experts. It was Jan Antonin Bata’s administration that designed, developed and built the industrial city called Batanagar in 1934. Jan Bata also build factories in Digha near Patna, and elsewhere in India, employing more than 7,000 people. Batanagar, under Jan Bata's ideals became one of the bigger suburban towns near Kolkata.
22. Batanagar (India 1934-1935) 23. Belcamp, Maryland USA, (1936–1939) 24. Batawa, Canada (1938–1939), founded by Jan Antonin Bata and taken over by Tomas J. Bata.
Brazil: 25. Batatuba (1939) 26. Mariapolis, Brazil (1941) 27. Bataguassu (1953) 28. Nova Andradina (1958) 29. Município de Anaurilândia (1963) 30. Município de Batayporã (1963)
Other Bata factories:
Boucherieth, Syria (1934) Iraq, Baghdad, (1934) Klang, Malaya (1935) Mansurieh (suburb of Alexandria), Egypt (1936) Gwelo formerly Rhodesia, later Modrat, Zimbabwe, (1937) Indonesia (1938), Peru, Lima (1939) Chile, Batafler (1939) Java Island, Batavia Kalibata (1939) Kenya, Nairobi/Limuru (1939) Pakistan, Lahore (1939) Morocco, Casablanca (1939) Belgian Congo (1940) Bolivia, Quillacollo (1940) Senegal, Dakar French West Africa (1940) Guatemala (1940) Haiti, Port au Prince (1940) Vietnam, Haiphong (1940) Philippines (1940) Bata factory in Digha near Patna, India
Baťa was regarded as an advocate of Taylorism, functionalism[2] and a proponent of many aspects of the Garden city movement.[1][3] Tomas Bata 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. Tomas 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. Tomáš Baťa stated:[4]
Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash (Junkers J13 D1608) in 1932 near the Zlín airport, trying to fly to Möhlin in Switzerland on a business trip under bad weather conditions (dense local fog). After his demise, his half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa took over ownership of the Bata companies and eventually fled to the United States due to the Nazi occupation in 1939, and later settled in Brazil. Tomas' son Thomas J. Bata anticipating the second world war along with over 100 families from Czechoslovakia moved to Canada in 1939 to develop the Bata Shoe Company of Canada centered in a town that still bears his name, Batawa, Ontario. The Second World war saw many Bata businesses in Europe and the Far East destroyed. After the Second World War, the core business enterprise in Czechoslovakia and other major enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe were nationalized by the Communist governments. Thomas devoted himself to the rebuilding and growth of the Bata Shoe Organization together with his wife and partner Sonja. He successfully spearheaded ethical and innovative expansion into new markets throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Under his leadership the Bata Shoe Organization experienced unprecedented growth and became the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of footwear selling over 300 million pairs of shoes each year and employing over 80,000 people.
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 Baťa did is a superb illustration of what is now called "quality management". The record shows that Tomáš Baťa did indeed precede 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 Baťa'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 Baťa'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 Baťa. I have chosen a less abstract approach, concentrating on the Baťa contributions I thought would be of greatest value in contemporary management. My objective is to find the most important lessons that the Baťa system of management can teach today's entrepreneurs.[5]
Wages scheme
Tomáš Baťa used 4 basic types of wages:
Also typical is so called "Baťa price" used to give a price ended almost always by number nine. Basically meaning that a price 99 or 19.99 looks apparently much better than rounded number such as 100 or 20, even though the difference is just 1 currency unit.
Aviation
For Tomáš Baťa aviation was another branch of activity - his company was apparently the world's first one to regularly use aircraft for expedient transport of not only high-echelon staff, but in case of need also e.g. skilled workers to places where their skills were needed soon - so the primary aim was the timely deployment of manpower to the spot where it was needed, not creating luxurious "royal barges" for a few chosen. His brother Jan A. Bata founded the famous Zlin aircraft works two years after Tomáš Baťa's death, starting with simple gliders, but offering, in the thirties to the eve of the WWII, several sophisticated types (e.g. the powered Zlin Z-XII, widely exported, and the Z-XIII, as well as some successful sailplanes) and even aero engines. The Moravan - Zlin factory is the direct descendant of Jan Bata's Czech aviation legacy.
Novel Botostroj, 1933 (The Shoe-Machine) by Svatopluk Turek a communist writer portrayed Tomáš Baťa as a strong willed dictator who sacrificed himself and all people around for success of the company. After being published, Jan Bata, sued for defamation and tried to stop further publishing. In 1954, Turek's novel was turned into a movie of the same name, made by director K.M. Walló.
Bata shoe factory (East Tilbury)