Bata: Advertising, Affordability, and the Hand of God Behind Europe’s First Footwear Giant

Mexico, 1986: Argentina and England played each other in the quarterfinals of that year's World Cup. As is usually the case in everything to do with soccer, the match was marked by more than just sportsmanship. Just four years earlier, the two countries were engaged in another conflict, the Falklands War. After Argentina's initial claim to the territory in 1982, then under British control, the UK army soon moved into the inhospitable southern territory, and in just 72 days, they recaptured the territory, leaving almost 700 dead on the Argentine side.

The conflict, which is still perceived in Argentina as one of the bloodiest and most unnecessary in the country's history, marked the competition between the two countries four years later. During the match, Diego Maradona scored one of the most famous goals in the history of soccer, the hand of God, where he used his left hand to hit the ball, which quickly entered the English goal, without the referee being able to see the foul and giving the advantage to the Rio de la Plata team.

The scene of the goal then went around the world, and remains one of the most important soccer events to this day. With the goal, the image of the British national team's goal also went around the world, where behind the net, a name dominated the competition's advertising hoarding: Bata. The shoe company took its first steps 131 years ago, and its logo has been translated into more than fourteen languages, with a business formula that has allowed it to become one of the most important companies in the world of footwear and to survive two world wars, the Nazi occupation and the communist nationalization of the company.

The image of the Bata logo went around the world thanks to Maradona's goal in the quarterfinals of the 1986 World Cup.

A global company in a small town

The Czech town of Zlín had just 3,000 inhabitants when Tomáš Bata chose his hometown to found his shoe factory. The entrepreneur chose Zlín, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, simply because it was his hometown, and the place where his family had been dedicated to the shoemaking trade for eight generations. Bata's decision, however, forever changed the fate of Zlín, as well as that of an industry still stuck in manual workshops and with only one master shoemaker.

Born in April 1876, Tomáš Bata came from a family with a shoemaking tradition dating back to 1667. It was precisely with his two siblings, Anna and Antonín Bata, that Tomáš decided to set up the T. & A. Baťa Shoe Company in 1894, which would eventually come to operate solely as Bata. The company began operations in an already unusual way for the time, hiring a staff of ten workers, as opposed to the traditional shoe workshops of the time, with one craftsman at the helm, and several steam engines that industrialized the manufacturing process.

The first key to Bata's success, however, did not come until a few years later, with the launch of its first footwear hit: the Batovka. The model was born out of the company's early economic difficulties, which led Bata to devise a shoe that combined both traditional leather, from which all shoes of the time were made, and fabric. The resulting shoe quickly caught on with the general public, both for its greater lightness and comfort and lower price.

Bata was started by Tomáš Bata in his hometown of Zlín (Czech Republic), together with his siblings Anna and Antonín.

The Batovka boosted Bata's production, so, in order to respond to a growing demand, the entrepreneur decided to travel to the United States to study closely the workings of mass production. His apprenticeships in the country allowed the company to continue to grow, and soon it was employing half a hundred workers, which by 1912, had evolved to a workforce of over 600 people.

With the outbreak of World War I, the company was able to maintain its growth by taking over part of the production of orders for the army, but once the conflict was over, Bata, like thousands of other companies of the time, had to cope with the falling purchasing power of the European population. Tomáš Bata's strategy was then to further reduce the price of its shoes, which allowed the company to increase its sales, and even expand its business to other countries and a network of factories in Germany, Poland or France.

The death of Tomáš Bata in 1832 in a plane crash prompted the entry of another of his brothers, Jan Antonín, and the former's son, Tomáš John Bata, into the company. The outbreak of World War II again marked Bata's history, first with the Nazi occupation, and the subsequent communist government in Czechoslovakia, which nationalized the company's entire network in the country. Tomáš Jr. went into exile in Canada in 1939, from where he started the company's new route.

After World War I, Bata further reduced its prices to cope with the drop in the population's purchasing power.

Shortly after the end of the war, in 1945, Bata officially moved its headquarters to the United Kingdom and, subsequently, to Canada, from where it returned to an aggressive expansion plan across different countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, in search of new emerging markets and in view of the destruction of Europe after the war. Instead of centralizing all its operations in the UK, however, the company established a network of autonomous sites capable of adapting both its strategy and offering to the needs of each market.

It is from this structure that Bata's business still draws today, decentralized in different countries. The company is present in 70 countries, with a network of around 6,000 points of sale worldwide, managed through subsidiaries in each region. In 2004, in fact, Bata was recognized as the largest footwear manufacturer in the world by Guinness World Records.

After nearly seven decades at the helm of the company, Tomáš Jr. stepped down in 2001, opening the door to his son, Tomáš George Bata, who again moved the headquarters, now back to European soil, to Lausanne in Switzerland. The company still maintains its headquarters there to this day.

The company has autonomous offices that manage its business independently. Pictured is Bata's first shoe, the Batovka model.

Current structure

The company today operates through its subsidiary in Switzerland, although it has maintained its decentralized structure. Bata's worldwide business is divided into five major regions, each with an independent headquarters, which then decentralizes its operations more locally in some countries.

In Europe, the company operates through the Italian subsidiary, based in Padua, while in Africa, Bata is headquartered in South Africa, and in Asia Pacific, in Singapore. In addition, the footwear company also operates in Latin America, through a head office in Chile, which is joined by two factories in Colombia and Bolivia. Finally, the company's last major region is India, the only country that operates as a region, mainly due to Bata's high penetration in the territory.

The company has a headquarters in the Indian city of Gurugram, near New Delhi, where it is the largest footwear manufacturer and retailer in the entire country, with a network of 1,375 stores and more than 30,000 wholesale distributors. The company was officially incorporated in 1931, and went public years later in 1973, when it was renamed Bata India Limited. India is not the only market in which the Bata subsidiary is listed (it is also listed in, for example, Bangladesh), although it is the largest company with this model.

The Bata family continues to own the company more than a century later, although in its professionalization it has moved out of the management organization. Today, Sandeep Kataria holds the position of CEO of Bata, after more than three years at the helm of Bata in India.

The group deals annually with more than 150 million pairs of shoes and has divided its business into three areas: Bata, which manages the North Star, Powe, Weinbrenner or Bubble Gummers brands; AW Lab, its multi-brand chain, which operates independently from the rest only in Italy and Spain, and Bata Industrials for its safety footwear business.

Advertising, key to the business

Advertising has been one of the cornerstones of the company throughout its history. Founder and first Tomáš Bata was already a pioneer in this area, introducing the technique of rounding prices in the 1990s. Bata initiated this strategy shortly after World War I, with the fall in purchasing power that affected many Europeans.

Bata's campaigns were a success, and the company continued to grow despite the economic difficulties of the time. Some of the company's most important advertising campaigns, however, came during the 1940s and 1950s, the golden age of advertising. Swiss designers Herbert Leupin or Peter Birkhäuser, as well as Oliviero Toscani, known for some of his controversial campaigns for Benetton, are some of the minds behind Bata's posters.

Founder and first Tomáš Bata was already a pioneer in this field, introducing the technique of rounding off prices by .90 percent.

Given the company's size, however, the company's advertising strategy was already then aimed at different markets. The Bata logo is thus translated into more than fourteen languages, to the point of "having become a synonym for shoes in some countries, where they stand as the only shoe company present," the company assures.

Bata's advertising strategy took a new turn in the 1960s, when it began sponsoring major athletes and sporting events, in line with its push at the time for sneakers and athletic shoes. American basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson, for example, began his career wearing the company's Wilson model, while tennis player Dick Stockton or British golfer Anthony Jacklin used them in their respective competitions.

Bata's momentum in the world of sports was such that the company became an official sponsor of the 1986 World Cup, a year known for Diego Maradona's goals against England, shortly after the Falklands War. In the images of the two plays, which have gone around the world and were even awarded Goal of the Century by Fifa, the Bata logo could be seen behind the England goal on all the world's televisions.