Levi Strauss & Co.
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Levi Strauss & Co. /ˌliːvaɪ ˈstraʊs/ is a privately held[6] American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's /ˌliːvaɪz/ brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853[7] when German immigrant Levi Strauss came from Buttenheim, Bavaria, to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods
business. Today's Levi's are made overseas, and there is only one line
of jeans made in the US, in Greensboro, NC. The company's corporate
headquarters is located in the Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.[8]
Private[1] | |
Industry | Clothing |
Founded | May 1, 1853 | (as David Stern & Lewis Strauss)
Founder | Levi Strauss |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Number of locations
| 2,800 company-operated stores[2] |
Area served
| Worldwide |
Key people
| Chip Bergh (CEO);[3] Harmit Singh (CFO)[3] |
Products | Jeans |
Brands | Levi's, Dockers, Denizen, Signature by Levi Strauss & Co. |
Revenue | $4.553 billion (2016)[4] |
$462.21 million (2016)[4] | |
$291.21 million (2016)[4] | |
Total assets | $2.987 billion (2016)[4] |
Owner | Levi Strauss family |
Number of employees
| 13,800[5] (2017) |
Website | www |
Contents
History
Origin and formation (1853–1890s)
Levi Strauss started the business at the 90 Sacramento Street address in San Francisco and then moved the location to 62 Sacramento Street.[citation needed] In 1858, the company was listed as Strauss, Levi (David Stern & Lewis Strauss) importers clothing etc. 63 & 65 Sacramento St. (Today, on the current grounds of the 353 Sacramento street Lobby [1]) in the San Francisco Directory with Strauss serving as its sales manager and his brother-in-law, David Stern, as its manager.[9] Jacob Davis, a Latvian Jewish immigrant, was a Reno, Nevada[10] tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth made from denim from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Davis' customers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly.[11] Davis did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Strauss suggesting that they go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacob's offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received U.S. Patent 139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patented rivet was later incorporated into the company's jean design and advertisements. Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), the manufacturing of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. The company created their first pair of Levi's 501 Jeans in the 1890s.Growth in popularity (1910s–1960s)
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Levi's jeans became popular among a wide range of youth subcultures, including greasers, mods, rockers, and hippies. Levi's popular shrink-to-fit 501s were sold in a unique sizing arrangement; the indicated size referred to the size of the jeans prior to shrinking, and the shrinkage was substantial.[12] The company still produces these unshrunk, uniquely sized jeans, and they are still Levi's number one selling product. Although popular lore (abetted by company marketing) holds that the original design remains unaltered, this is not the case: the crotch rivet and waist cinch were removed during World War II to conform to War Production Board requirements to conserve metal, and was not replaced after the war. Additionally, the back pocket rivets, which had been covered in denim since 1937, were removed completely in the 1950s due to complaints they scratched furniture.[13]
Blue jeans era (1960s–1980s)
In the 1980s, The company closed around 60 of its manufacturing plants because of financial difficulties and strong competition from competitors.[16]
The Dockers brand, launched in 1986 and which is sold largely through department store chains, helped the company grow through the mid-1990s, as denim sales began to fade. Dockers were introduced into Europe in 1996 and led by CEO Jorge Bardina. Levi Strauss attempted to sell the Dockers division in 2004 to relieve part of the company's $2.6 billion outstanding debt.
Brand competition (1990s)
Cited for sub-minimum wages, seven-day work weeks with 12-hour shifts, poor living conditions and other indignities, Tan Holdings Corporation, Levi Strauss' Marianas subcontractor, paid what were then the largest fines in U.S. labor history, distributing more than $9 million in restitution to some 1,200 employees.[17][18][19] Levi Strauss claimed no knowledge of the offenses, then severed ties to the Tan family and instituted labor reforms and inspection practices in its offshore facilities.
The activist group Fuerza Unida (United Force) formed following the January 1990 closure of a plant in San Antonio, Texas, in which 1,150 seamstresses, some of whom had worked for Levi Strauss for decades, saw their jobs exported to Costa Rica.[20] During the mid- and late-1990s, Fuerza Unida picketed the Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest at the company's labor policies.[21][22][23]
The company took on multibillion-dollar debt in February 1996 to help finance a series of leveraged stock buyouts among family members. Shares in Levi Strauss stock are not publicly traded; the firm as of 2016 is owned almost entirely by indirect descendants and collateral relatives of Levi Strauss, whose four nephews inherited the San Francisco dry-goods firm after their uncle's death in 1902.[24] The corporation's bonds are traded publicly, as are shares of the company's Japanese affiliate, Levi Strauss Japan K.K.
In June 1996, the company offered to pay its workers an unusual dividend of up to $750 million in six years' time, having halted an employee-stock plan at the time of the internal family buyout. However, the company failed to make cash-flow targets, and no worker dividends were paid.[25]
The annual sales of the brand increased in 1997 to reach $7.1 billion.[26]
Recent developments (2000–present)
In 2002, the company closed its Valencia Street plant in San Francisco, which had opened the same year of the city's April 1906 earthquake.[30][31] By the end of 2003, the closure of Levi's last U.S. factory in San Antonio ended 150 years of jeans made in the USA.[32] Production of a few higher-end, more expensive styles of jeans resumed in the US several years later.[31]
By 2007, Levi Strauss was again profitable after declining sales in nine of the previous ten years.[33] Its total annual sales, of just over $4 billion, were $3 billion less than during its peak performance[31] in the mid-1990s.[34] After more than two decades of family ownership, rumors of a possible public stock offering were floated[by whom?] in the media in July 2007.[35] In 2009, it was noted[by whom?] in the media for selling jeans on interest-free credit, due to the global recession.[36][37] In 2010, the company partnered with Filson, an outdoor-goods manufacturer in Seattle, to produce a high-end line of jackets and workwear.[38]
In 2011, the firm hired Chip Bergh as the president and chief executive of the brand.[39][40]
On May 8, 2013, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers announced that Levi Strauss & Co. had purchased the naming rights to their new stadium in Santa Clara, California. The naming-rights deal called for Levi's to pay $220.3 million to the city of Santa Clara and to the 49ers over twenty years, with an option to extend the deal for another five years for around $75 million.[41] As of 2016, Levi Strauss Signature jeans are sold in 110 countries.[40]
In 2016, the company reported revenues of $4.6 billion.[40]
On July 13, 2017, Levi Strauss heir Bill Goldman died in a private plane crash near Sonoma, California.[42]
In 2017, Levi Strauss & Co. released a "smart jacket", an apparel they developed in partnership with Google. After two years of collaboration, the result was a denim jacket set at $350.[43]
In 2020, Levi Strauss & Co. are expected to have completely replaced chemical usage to lasers in order to cut and design ripped parts of jeans.[44]
Cultural impact
Levi's has been worn by people from all walks of life, from miners to Nobel Prize recipients including Albert Einstein himself, whose famous leather jacket was made by Levi Strauss & Co in the 1930s and has recently been sold at auction house Christies for £110,500.[45]Corporate structure and staff
Current products
Products include jeans, trousers, shorts, shirts, jackets, sweaters, T-shirts, underwear, socks, eyeglasses, accessories, shoes, dresses, skirts, belts, overalls, jumpsuits and a "big and tall" range. Jeans are categorised by fit as: skinny, slim, straight, bootcut, taper, relaxed, flare and big & tall. Most of the adult denim jeans are identifiable by trademarked three digit style numbers. 501s are available in styles for both men and women, the rest of the 500 series are marketed for men and the 300, 400, 700, and 800 series for women, with the exception of 751s which are classic straight zip fly jeans.[46]See also
References
- "Levi Strauss.com". Retrieved June 18, 2016.
Further reading
- Ford, Carin T. (2004). Levi Strauss: The Man Behind Blue Jeans (Famous Inventors). Enslow Publishers. ISBN 0-7660-2249-8.
- Van Steenwyk, Elizabeth (1988). Levi Strauss: The Blue Jeans Man. Walker. ISBN 0-8027-6795-8.
- Cray, Ed (1978). Levi's: The Shrink to Fit business that stretched to cover the world. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-26477-4.
External links
Categories:
- 1930s fashion
- 1940s fashion
- 1950s fashion
- 1960s fashion
- 1970s fashion
- 1980s fashion
- 1990s fashion
- 2000s fashion
- 2010s fashion
- Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
- Clothing brands
- Clothing brands of the United States
- Clothing companies of the United States
- Companies established in 1853
- Financial District, San Francisco
- Jeans by brand
- Privately held companies based in California
- Manufacturing companies based in San Francisco
- Levi Strauss & Co.
Languages
Levi Strauss & Co. is privately held by the descendants of the family of Levi Strauss. Shares of company stock are not publicly traded.
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