Tomáš Baťa (born 3 April 1876 in Zlín – died July 1932) was a Czech footwear entrepreneur, owner of the Zlín company Bata and mayor of Zlín from 1923 to 1932.[1][3]
The Bata company
The company was founded in September 1894 by the siblings Tomáš, Antonín and Anna Baťa. From 1908 Tomáš Baťa was its sole owner; he employed more than three hundred workers, who produced over 3,000 pairs of shoes a day.[2] The firm's success was launched by shoes sewn from canvas, cheaper than leather ones. The First World War increased demand for military footwear.[2] In the crisis that followed, Baťa halved the price of shoes and cut wages by 40 per cent, compensating employees with discounts in company shops.[2]
By the end of the 1920s the company employed more than five thousand people. Baťa founded the Baťa School of Work, which trained new managers, and introduced a management system in which each part of the enterprise was responsible for its own economic results.[2] Besides footwear, the company made machinery, tyres and films. In 1932 it had sister companies, shops and factories in 56 countries and employed over 30,000 people.[1]
Mayor of Zlín
As mayor he lowered local taxes, which attracted further entrepreneurs, merchants and craftsmen to the town. He developed Zlín as a garden city with modern architecture.[1] The architects Jan Kotěra, František Lydie Gahura, Miroslav Lorenc and Vladimír Karfík took part in the building; from a small town of five thousand inhabitants it grew into an agglomeration of 43,500.[3] In 1929 schools with a programme of experimental education began operating in Zlín.[1]
Death and successor
In July 1932 Baťa flew to Switzerland to open a new branch. Shortly after take-off his aircraft crashed.[2] The company was taken over by his half-brother Jan Antonín Baťa, who turned it into a multinational concern.[2]
Legacy
Tomas Bata University in Zlín, founded as of 1 January 2001, bears the name of Tomáš Baťa. His son Tomáš Baťa Jr. agreed to the choice of the name and until his death in 2008 chaired the university's board of trustees.[4]
Sources
- Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně — 3 April 2021
- Český rozhlas Radiožurnál — 4 September 2014
- Statutární město Zlín (zlin.eu)
- Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně