Bata: Shoemaker to the World

Gary Clarkson is a history lecturer at the University of Windsor and a
book reviewer for the Windsor Star.

Autobiographies of shoemakers must certainly be a rarity, while
autobiographies of prosperous Canadian shoemakers must be as infrequent
as solar eclipses.Yet here are over 300 fact-filled pages relating the
interesting entrepreneurial adventures of a man born in 1914 in (what
was to become) Czechoslovakia, into the shoemaking dynasty of Bata.
Virtually at birth, Thomas became heir to a company with global
ambitions.

Imbibing the shoe business with his pablum, so to speak, and given jobs
to do as an apprentice, Thomas came to the presidency of the company
very suddenly, when his father died in an airplane crash. Like his
father, our Bata was warm-hearted to his employees, and could combine
this paternalism with a practical mind for the ever-attendant fortunes
of the firm.

First, however, he had to escape the collapse of Czechoslovakia, as
that country succumbed to the wounds imposed upon it by the Munich
Agreement of 1938. He chose Canada as his adoptive country.
Specifically, he decided on a site near Trenton, in southeastern
Ontario.

He had brought a number of Czech shoemaking families with him. Bata
quickly learned about Canadian political life as he strove to set up his
factory: established shoe manufacturers were deeply concerned about this
newcomer. In very little time, however, Bata became commercially
acclimatized to Canada, earning the respect rather than the animosity of
his competitors. Indeed, as World War II showed, Bata became a good
Canadian, contributing to the war effort by making boots for servicemen,
as well as other military supplies.

Despite the importance of the Canadian and American markets, however,
Thomas could see that the postwar markets were likely to be in
underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia (and to some extent Latin
America). India, in particular, had long been a Bata centre of activity.

The reader will learn a great deal about the politics of the
underdeveloped world, as well as about the details of commercial
activity and the travails required to stay profitable.

The human element is not lacking, nor is the dignity that should remain
when talking in public about one’s family. Bata’s brief return to
Czechoslovakia in 1989 to celebrate his native land’s new freedom will
touch the reader. The Bata ambition to shoe every pair of human feet has
had amazing consequences.