An aerial view of the city of Zlin with Bata factory buildings in the foreground.
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You probably haven’t heard of Zlín, and you might not have heard of Bat’a, but outside of the US, most people the world over know the Bata (pronounced “baht-yah”, and I’ll write it without the apostrophe after the “t” from here on out for ease of English reader’s eyes and your devices’ fonts) brand of shoes. This post will explore the unlikely origin of probably one of the world’s first international brands (and arguably one of the first global brands) in this small town nestled in the Vizovice Highlands east of Brno and West of the Slovak border in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic.
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Zlín’s History
The first written records of Zlín are from 1322 when it was a market town and a craft guild center. Badly damaged in the Thirty Years’ War, Zlín was neglected by the Hungarian noble family that was given ownership of it after the war. As a result, Zlín’s industrial development was limited and its economy was driven by small-scale craftsmanship until the 20th century.
In the communist years the town was called Gottwaldov, named for the first communist president of Czechoslovakia. After the Thirty Years’ War, Zlín got its original name back. 
One of many Bata factory buildings exhibiting their iconic "Constructivist" architectural style.
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The Birth of Bata
The Bata Company was founded in 1894 by Tomas Bata and his siblings. After initial gradual growth, both the company’s and its workers prosperity increased rapidly when Bata began supplying shoes to the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I.
The success of Bata’s business transformed Zlín from a small town to a booming industrial center and led to Bata’s being elected its mayor at one point. 
Closeup of the facade of one of Ba'ta's factory buildings. Photo by Romavor on Pixabay.
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Bata the Visionary
Bata was truly a visionary – he developed his own management style that is still studied and used by businesses today. In furtherance of the development of his ideas, Bata briefly lived in the United States and worked the assembly line at Ford to learn lessons that he could apply to the production of shoes.
In addition to the use of mass production techniques and a highly efficient distribution system, Bata developed marketing practices that made his company thrive on an international scale. 
Giant-sized shoes specially made for and signed by basketball star Shaquille O'Neal on display in the Bata shoe museum.
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$8.99 or $9.00?
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Tomas Bata is the one credited with coming up with the practice of pricing goods at, say, $8.99 instead of $9.00, realizing that psychologically people will be more willing to pay the perceived-less-by-a-dollar price than the price that is in reality only $0.01 more.
He also eventually opened his own film studio for the production of company advertisements, which later branched off into television shows, cartoons and even feature films. A True Company Town
But Bata's didn’t just want to create a company; he envisioned a model for industrial towns that would benefit both the company and the workers. He wanted his workers to have more than just jobs – he wanted them to have a better quality of life.
To that end, Bata took inspiration from mill towns in the United States and built affordable housing for his employees. The housing that Bata built for his employees was both a rarity and a luxury for the working– and management–class in Europe at that time.
In addition to workers’ housing, Bata invested in schools, healthcare, and leisure for his employees, believing that a strong community was built on well-being.
While Bata’s attitude toward labor is characterized as progressive, being a true company town meant that Bata owned everything – the employees’ housing, the shops, the restaurants, the canteen, and the 2,000-seat (yes - 2,000!) cinema. So the wages earned by Bata’s employees were spent mostly in other businesses owned by Bata.
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And once an employee obtained company housing, he (mostly) or she was required to maintain the property, cut the grass and keep the property tidy. Pets were not allowed, and domestic quarrels (or worse) would get you evicted. Employees were also encouraged to attend church and to exercise regularly.
Still, for its time, Bata’s housing was something that was highly sought after.
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American Style and Gentrification
And Bata’s housing is still sought after today. Like areas in the U.S. that have gone through gentrification, Batas houses, as they are called, are desired by up and coming professionals who are the only ones who can afford them these days.
The first worker’s houses that Bata built were wooden like those of the many U.S. coal-mining, steel mill and textile mill towns in the U.S. Houses made out of wood in the modern era in Europe were and still are very unusual. Brick and mortar rendered with stucco is the norm in most of Europe and in almost all of Central Europe. None of Zlín’s wooden houses remain today, but the photos I’ve seen of them remind me of many of the company houses in and around the textile mills near my hometown in Georgia.
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Bata then moved on to brick houses not rendered on the outside with stucco (also unusual for Europe). These are the main model of home that remains in the original company housing area of Zlín and are the ones that are particularly desirable. Here, too, the architecture was inspired by the U.S., and American architects helped Czech architects with the design and construction of the first Bata brick homes. Once they settled on what they believed was the perfect model for the homes, it was replicated on crescent-shaped streets.
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A CEO Ahead of His Time
Bata initiated remarkable urban planning, making Zlín one of the first planned industrial towns in Europe, with a focus on the aesthetics and functionality of the factory and other buildings, including many iconic architectural landmarks.
Though not built by Tomas Bata but by his half-brother Jan Antonin after Tomas' death, the Bata Skyscraper was one of the first high-rise buildings in Europe and, at 16 floors, was one of the tallest when it was completed in 1938. But the most amazing thing about it has got to be its “elevator office.” Jan Antonin had the architect place his office in basically what is a huge elevator car on one corner of the building. The office/elevator would ride up and down from floor to floor, where Bata could observe first-hand the progress of work on various factory floors of the building through the large windows of the office and elevator shaft. 
The 16-story Bata skyscraper at night. On the back right corner, you can see the illuminated elevator shaft of Bata's office.
This “floating office” was so large that it had a desk for Bata, one for his secretary to sit and take dictation, his phone and a sink with running water. The office/elevator with original fixtures and furnishing still functions today, and you can ride it (if you dare – the view out of the windows of the building as the office ascended motivated me to take the stairs down) if you visit the town and tour the facilities.
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The building has a number of other unique features and, due to its height, stands out in the town, but one of the most striking things about it is its modern Functionalist (sometimes called “Constructivist”) design. Simple rectangular shapes and straight lines characterize its façade, and its exposed red brick construction with concrete cylindrical columns painted white traversing the height of the building make it pleasing to the eye. It’s also timeless.
What’s more, almost all of the Bata factory buildings are in the same style, as are many of the town’s other company buildings, like the hotels and dormitories and university buildings, giving Zlín a calming, universal and congruent appearance.
Pictured above: Various factory and residential buildings in Zlin featuring the classic Bata Constructivist style.
If you want to learn more about the legacy of Tomas Bata and Bata shoes, check out these titles.
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Ever the driven CEO, Bata met his demise in a plane crash near the Zlín airport trying to get to a business meeting in Switzerland in bad weather conditions in 1932. His half-brother Jan Antonin took over the company until the communist government nationalized it after WWII, at which point Tomas' son, Thomas J. Bata, by then an adult, escaped to the West and took the brand to Canada, India and beyond.
To their credit, even the communist regime allowed architects to construct the new buildings in Zlín in the red brick and white columned Constructivist style first developed in the 1930s under founder Tomas Bata - even if sometimes corners were cut in construction and material quality - rather than the standard gray concrete prefabricated buildings typical of the communist era.
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But you get the picture: Bata is synonymous with Zlin. And as Bata's company grew (and the town's population grew almost tenfold in the decade between 1923 and 1932 as Bata's factories churned out more shoes), so did Zlín’s international reputation. The town became known as a symbol of industrial innovation, with the Bata brand becoming a global name in footwear. And Zlin's development under Bata influenced the way industrial towns evolved.
Beyond Bata
Today, Zlín is an Urban Management Zone, still shaped by the innovations Bata introduced in urban development and industrial organization. And although shoe production (and things like precision engineering) continued in Zlin until after the Berlin Wall came down, now there is very little manufacturing of any kind in Bata's company. Most of the Bata factory buildings have been repurposed into an information center, a shoe museum and shops which attract quite a lot of visitors.
The Zlín Congress Centre by Eva Jiricna. It also serves as the seat of the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic.
And Bata is not the only famous Zlin native: internationally renowned Czech architect Eva Jiricna also hails from Zlin, and as the town has gone through a rebirth following the fall of communist rule, she has built some new buildings in her hometown, such as a new concert hall in her signature modern steel and glass style.
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If you'd like to know more about Zlin or the legacy of the Bata brand, please get in touch. And if you're headed to Prague and want a private tour or help with planning your trip, let me know!
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AuthorI am an American who has been living in Prague for two decades. After a long career in international finance, I left the business world to pursue other interests. I now work as a writer, mentor and guide to the city. Archives
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