Fourteen Billion Pairs
Anna, Antonín and Tomáš Baťa opened a shoemaking workshop in Zlín, then part of Austria-Hungary, on 21 September 1894, with ten full-time employees on a fixed schedule and regular weekly wages — an unusual arrangement for a shoemaker at the time. Within a year the young company was seriously in debt.
Tomáš's response was to switch part of production to canvas shoes rather than leather — a cheaper line that sold well enough to clear the company's debts by 1897. It was the first of several pivots that would define the company's growth: a willingness to change the product rather than wait out the market.
Tomáš later traveled to the United States to study contemporary factory management and wage systems, and brought the ideas home to Zlín, restructuring the company so employees shared in profit and loss and could earn bonuses tied to output — a profit-sharing model unusual for its era, and central to how the company scaled into a mass manufacturer. He also served as mayor of Zlín from 1923 to 1932, shaping the town itself around the factory it grew up beside.
Guinness World Records has recognized Baťa as the largest shoe manufacturer and seller in history, crediting the company with more than 14 billion pairs of shoes sold since its founding — a figure large enough that it is easier to state than to picture. Zlín remains the historical seat of the business, home to Baťa-built factory architecture, workers' housing, and a company museum from the Baťa era, should anyone want to see where fourteen billion pairs of shoes started: ten employees, one cash crisis, and a switch to canvas.
Article references
The houses in this story
- Baťa Zlín, Czech Republic
Shoe company founded 21 September 1894 in Zlín by siblings Anna, Antonín and Tomáš Baťa. Tomáš's switch to canvas footwear during an 1895 cash crisis, plus American-style factory management he studied firsthand, built it into a global manufacturer. store page → · open in the atlas →