Word: bata
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...world walks in everything from sandals and slippers to sabots and bare soles, but its largest shoemaker covets every foot - and aims to cover it. This year Canada's Bata Ltd. (pronounced Bot-ya) will produce 190 million pairs of shoes in 3,000 styles sewn in 80 plants scattered over 67 countries. It has opened 16 plants in the past three years, last week opened another on tiny Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and plans to build two more soon in Uganda and France. To run this mixed shoe bag more effectively, Bata next month will move into...
Loss to the Nazis. Canada is Bata's adopted home. The firm was organized in Zlin, Austria (later Czechoslovakia)< in 1894 by young Shoemaker Thomas Bata, who got an idea for making shoes faster and cheaper with assembly-line techniques. Bata's idea worked so well that he soon branched out, at his death in 1932 owned plants in 27 countries. His heirs, Half-Brother Jan and Son thomas Jr., later lost part of this empire to the Nazis and then to the Czech Communists, who expropriated the Zlin works and now turn out shoes for the East...