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'Levi Strauss & Co.' is a privately held clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the company began producing denim overalls in the 1870s, modern jeans were not produced until the 1920s. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with employee ownership and a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss' four nephews.

Contents

Organization

History

Labor issues

Plant closures, Wal-Mart alliance

References

External links

Organization

Levi Strauss & Co. is a worldwide corporation organized into three geographic divisions:

★ Levi Strauss, North Americas (LSNA), based in the San Francisco headquarters

★ Levi Strauss Europe (LSE), based in Brussels

★ Asia Pacific Division (APD), based in Singapore
The company employs a staff of approximately 8,850 people worldwide, and owns and develops three major brands:
; 'Dockers': (http://www.dockers.com) Launched in 1986, defined as "stylish and comfortable casual wear" for men and women. Sold largely through department store chains, Dockers were the engine of the company's spectacular success and growth up to and through the mid-1990s (even as denim sales began to fade). Levi-Strauss attempted to sell the brand in 2004 to relieve part of the company's $2 billion outstanding debt.[1]

'Levi's': (http://www.levi.com) The main brand, founded in 1873 in San Francisco specializing in riveted denim jeans (including the world-famous 501s) and different lines of casual and street fashion.
'Levi Strauss Signature': (http://www.levistrausssignature.com) Launched in 2003, defined as "high-quality, affordable, fashionable jeanswear and casualwear from a company and name they trust." Sold at Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, and Shopko.

History

One of Levi's customers was Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Jacob's costumers 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. Jacobs did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi suggesting that they both go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacobs' offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The "patented rivet" would later be incorporated into the company's jean design (and into later advertising lore). 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), manufacture of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s.

Labor issues

By the 1990s, the brand was facing competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas, and began accelerating the pace of its U.S. factory closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements. In 1991, Levi Strauss was embarrassed by a scandal involving six subsidiary factories on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, where some 3% of Levi's jeans sold annually with the "Made in the U.S.A." label were shown to have been made by imported Chinese laborers under what the U.S. Department of Labor called "slavelike" conditions. Cited for sub-minimal wages, seven-day work week schedules with twelve-hour shifts, poor living conditions and other indignities, the Tan family, Levi Strauss' Marianas subcontractor, would pay what were then the largest fines in U.S. labor history, distributing more than $9 million in restitution to some 1200 employees.[2][3][4] (See also Tan Holdings Corporation.) Levi Strauss claimed no knowledge of the offenses, severed ties to the Tan family, and instituted labor reforms and inspection practices in its offshore facilities.
A domestic protest group, ''Fuerza Unida'' ("United Force"), was formed following the January 1990 closure of a plant in San Antonio, Texas, in which 1,150 seamstresses (primarily Latina), some of whom had worked for Levi Strauss for decades, saw their jobs exported to Costa Rica.[5] During the mid- and late-1990s, ''Fuerza Unida'' picketed Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest of the company's labor policies.[6][7][8]

Plant closures, Wal-Mart alliance

The company took on multi-billion 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 is today owned almost entirely by indirect descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss, whose four nephews inherited the thriving San Francisco dry goods firm after their uncle's death in 1902.[9] (Levi's bonds are traded publicly, as are shares of the company's Japan 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. The company failed to make cash flow targets, however, and no worker dividends were paid.^[1] In 2002, Levi Strauss began a close business collaboration with Wal-Mart, producing a special line of "Signature" jeans and other clothes for exclusive sale in Wal-Mart stores.[10] The company is now Wal-Mart's largest worldwide strategic partner, conforming to Wal-Mart's business and labor practices.[11][12] Levi Strauss & Co. closed 58 U.S. manufacturing plants between 1981 and 1990, sending 25% of its sewing overseas.[13] Levi's accelerated U.S. plant closings through the 1990s, closing its last U.S. domestic plant (in San Antonio, Texas) in January 2004.[14][15]
According to the ''New York Times'', Levi Strauss leads the apparel industry in trademark infringement cases, filing nearly 100 lawsuits against competitors since 2001. Most cases center on the alleged imitation of Levi's back pocket stitching pattern (U.S. trademark #1,139,254), a double arc. Levi's has sued Guess, Esprit, Zegna, Zumiez, and Lucky Brand, among other jeans manufacturers.[16]
By 2007, Levi Strauss was again said to be profitable after declining sales in nine of the last ten years.[17] Its total annual sales (of just over $4 billion) were $3 billion less than during its peak performance in the mid-1990s.[18] After more than two decades of family ownership, rumors of a possible public stock offering were floated in the media in July 2007, although for now the company "will stay focused on boosting cash flow and further whittling down that debt."[19]

References

★ Levi Strauss: The Man Behind Blue Jeans (Famous Inventors), , Carin T., Ford, Enslow Publishers, 2004, ISBN 0-7660-2249-8

★ The Levi's story, , Art, Roth, , ,

★ Levi Strauss: The Blue Jeans Man, , Elizabeth, Van Steenwyk, Walker & Company, 1988, ISBN 0-8027-6795-8
1. [title="Levi Strauss Offers To Pay A Dividend To Workers" | publisher=New York Times | date=June 13, 1996 | author=James Sterngold]

External links

★ Corporate site

★ Official site