The Baťa shoe company was founded in Zlín by the Baťa siblings on 21 September 1894. It developed successfully, and its growth soon accelerated the development of the entire city as well. The old town of craftsmen and traders was transformed into an important industrial centre.
The new shoemaking enterprise, led by Tomáš Baťa (1876-1932), soon acquired modern factory buildings (1900, 1906). The number of employees increased, and the reputation of Baťa shoes spread. Other entrepreneurs followed Baťa’s example, and between 1899 and 1910 five additional shoe factories were established in Zlín. Around 1910, Zlín gained the status of a major centre of the footwear industry. The then mayor, F. Štěpánek, played a significant role in modernising the city and revitalising public life.
During the First World War, Zlín factories supplied millions of pairs of shoes to the Austro-Hungarian army, and production continued to rise. In 1918, Baťa's factory employed 4,000 workers. The post-war crisis slowed development; Zlín’s factories struggled to survive, some smaller shoe companies ceased operation, while others newly established began production. Baťa’s company endured, although it too had to reduce output. At Zlín Town Hall, the Social Democrats and later the Communists took power (1919-1923).
Tomáš Baťa overcame the crisis with a bold decision: in September 1922, he cut the price of his shoes by half. With affordable products, he quickly won thousands of customers, came to dominate the market and became Czechoslovakia’s king of shoes. His Zlín plant embarked on an unprecedented period of growth.
From 1923, the Baťa factory on the western edge of Zlín expanded into a vast industrial complex with dozens of modern buildings. Equipped with the latest machinery, the company took on thousands of new employees and turned out millions of pairs of shoes. In addition, machinery, rubber, chemical, textile and other products were also manufactured here. Within Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Baťa established further factories in Otrokovice, Třebíč, Bošany, Nové Zámky and Krasice.
Abroad, a network of Baťa shoe shops expanded from 1918 onwards. At the same time, from 1919, Tomáš Baťa established sister companies abroad to facilitate the export of shoes made in Zlín. In the United States, he operated his own factory temporarily in 1919, while the construction of new shoe factories in Europe and Asia began in 1931. As a result, many countries still contain what are often referred to as ‘little Zlíns’ today. By 1932, Tomáš Baťa had shops, companies and factories in 54 countries on four continents, employing 31,000 workers in Czechoslovakia and abroad.
Alongside the expansion of the company, Zlín itself was being transformed, particularly after Tomáš Baťa became mayor in 1923, a position he held until 1932. In 1925, he launched a programme of public education reform and, just four years later, Zlín schools began teaching according to an experimental curriculum. As mayor, Baťa strongly supported business development in the city, leading to a rapid increase in the number of craftsmen, tradesmen and merchants: 149 (1923) – 294 (1927) – 414 (1931). In the municipal elections in 1927, he announced another programme – to build Zlín as a garden city.
Mayor Tomáš Baťa also supported ambitious cultural projects. In 1924, he helped finance a festival of Smetana’s operas, and in 1930 he made a concert by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra possible. He established new cultural institutions: in 1930 he opened a shoe museum in the Zlín Château and founded a zoo in the château park. In the spring of 1931, Baťa secured a government decision to establish the Zlín District. The city’s position as a regional economic, educational and healthcare centre was being strengthened.
Baťa’s company built thousands of new apartment buildings, department stores, a hotel, a cinema, a large hospital, school buildings, research institutes and film studios. The population grew rapidly: 4,678 (1921) – 21,582 (1930) – 37,342 (1937). Intense construction activity transformed Zlín into a super-modern industrial city. Development was not chaotic but followed modern urban-planning concepts. Projects were designed by leading architects J. Kotěra, F. L. Gahura, V. Karfík and M. Lorenc, giving Zlín a functionally unique character within Europe, one that also attracted the attention of renowned architect Le Corbusier.
After the death of Tomáš Baťa in 1932, the company management was taken over by his associates D. Čipera, H. Vavrečka and J. Hlavnička, with Jan Antonín Baťa becoming the head of the firm. New branch plants were established in Napajedla, Batizovce, Baťovany, Zruč nad Sázavou, Sezimovo Ústí and elsewhere in Czechoslovakia, as well as new factories, trading companies and shoe shops abroad. By 1938, Baťa enterprises employed 65,064 people, of whom 41,814 worked in Czechoslovakia and 23,250 abroad. Zlín became the headquarters of Baťa’s global footwear empire, a city where commercial and production links from almost the entire world converged.
The catastrophic consequences of the Munich Agreement, the German occupation and the Second World War halted the expansion of Baťa’s enterprises and of Zlín itself. Under German occupation, the factories were subordinated to the war economy, and American bombing in 1944 destroyed a large part of Zlín’s industrial facilities. The hardships of war ended with the liberation of the city by Soviet and Romanian troops on 2 May 1945.
This text draws on materials from the brochure Zlín – City in Gardens, published by the Statutory City of Zlín in 2005, texts by L. Horňáková, P. Novák, Z. Pokluda
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