Levi Strauss & Co.
Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&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 from Bavaria, Germany 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.
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; and Asia Pacific Division (APD), based in Singapore. The company employs a staff of approximately 8,850 people worldwide, and owns and develops a few brands. Levi's, the main brand, was founded in 1873 in San Francisco, specializing in riveted denim jeans and different lines of casual and street fashion.
From the early 1960s through the mid 1970s, Levi Strauss experienced explosive growth in its business as the more casual look of the 60s and 70s ushered in the "blue jeans craze" and served as a catalyst for the brand. Levis, under the leadership of Jay Walter Haas Sr., Peter Haas Sr., Paul Glasco and George P. Simpkins Sr., expanded the firm's clothing line by adding new fashions and models, including stoned washed jeans through the acquisition of Great Western Garment Co.,(GWG), a Canadian clothing manufacturer, acquired by Levis. GWG was responsible for the introduction of the modern "stone washing" technique, still in use by Levi Strauss.
Mr. Simpkins is credited with the company's record paced expansion of its manufacturing capacity from fewer than 16 plants to more than 63 plants nationwide from 1964 through 1974. Perhaps most impressive, however, was that Levis' expansion under Simpkins was accomplished without a single unionized employee as a result of Levis' and the Hass families' strong stance on human rights and Simpkins' use of "pay for performance" manufacturing at the sewing machine operator level up. As a result, Levis' plants were perhaps the highest performing, best organized and cleanest textile facilities of their time. Levis even piped in massive amounts of air conditioning into its press plants, which were known in the industry to be notoriously hot, for the comfort of Levis' workers.
Foot locker, Inc. is an American sportswear and footwear retailer that operates in about 20 countries worldwide. Foot Locker, once formerly known as Venator Group, Inc., is the successor corporation to the F.W. Woolworth Company. Foot Locker operates a series of athletic footwear retail outlets such as Kids Foot Locker, Lady Foot Locker, Champs Sports, Foot Action USA, Eastbay, and footLocker.com. Foot Locker is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol FL and according to the SEC had 3,921 mall-based stores worldwide. Between 1963 and the 1980s the corporation diversified its portfolio of specialty shops. F.W. Woolworth Company purchased Kinney Shoe Corporation and operated it as a subsidiary; Kinney later branched into specialty shoe stores, including Styles, Susie Casuals, and Foot Locker. The company’s aggressive strategy was if a particul...
In 1924, the laundry business was doing terribly. The companies kept prices too low to make a profit and their tailors threatened to leave if they had to pay their cleaning bills. The business was doing terribly because the Purple Gang run, labor union for laundry services was causing chaos in Detroit. They threatened anyone who didn’t join the union by bombing or harassing them (Fitzpatrick, “Cleaners and Dyers War”).
The company I chose to explore is TJ Maxx. I choose TJ Maxx because they are one of my favorite stores where I can find brand name products at an affordable price. The TJX Companies, Inc. have been in the business industry for 36 years. TJ Maxx started in 1919 when Brothers Max and Morris Feldberg founded New England Trading Company in Boston, Massachusetts and opened the first retail store in 1929, dedicated to selling women hosiery. Two decades later, that one store grown into a whole chain of women's apparel stores that overextended from New England to Washington D.C. In the mid 70’s T.J. Maxx was born and grew into what is known today as the TJX Companies, Inc., which is the leading off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions in the United States and worldwide.
Timmerman suggests that “We share little with the people who make our clothes nowadays. We’re divided by oceans, politics, language, culture, and a complex web of economic relationships. It doesn’t affect our daily lives if they are overworked and underpaid as it did during the turn of the twentieth century,” thus demonstrating the inadequacy of outsourcing and the relationships between the corporation, factory workers, and the consumer (180). The dynamic between the corporations, factory workers, factory owners, and middle-men is complicated and tense due to the interactions, communication, and duties differentiating between each group. For the factory workers, they suffer working in hard conditions, though the workers are happy to have a job, they would rather endure the harsh stipulations for the means of production to make money to send to their families than to protest against their factory owners (Timmerman 7).
J. Crew, also known as J. Crew Group Inc., is a private label company known for its preppy fashions that are fashionable yet costly. Essentially, the company was owned by the Cinader family for most of its history. Mitchell Cinader and Saul Charles founded the company in 1947. It was originally known as Popular Merchandise Inc. doing business as the Popular Club Plan, in which Mitchell’s son Arthur was the overseer. The company sold women’s clothing through in-home demonstrations. In the early 1980’s, Cinader and Charles observed catalog retailers such as Land’s End, Talbots and L.L. Bean reporting rising sales in revenue. With intentions to increase sales and duplicate success of these well known companies, Popular Club Plan began its own catalog (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/j-crew-group-inc-history/).
Levi's had sold to Wal-Mart through a value brand called Brittania in the 80's and the 90s, but that came to an end in 1994 over a dispute in Canada about Levi's Orange Tab jeans. After that, sales dwindled for Brittania, and Levi's sold Brittania to VF Corp. In 2002, however, Levi's was thinking about offering a new value brand for Wal-Mart. It was not that easy of a decision though. They had to think of a way to keep the existing customers in the other channels and not lessen the brand's perceived quality overall.
L.L.Bean started from making a hundred pair of boots, to becoming one of America largest mail order retailer of high quality outdoor goods and apparel for men, women and children. Leon Leonwood Bean founded L.L. Bean in 1912; the company headquarters is in Freeport, Maine. Leon Leonwood Bean founded his business on a belief in honesty, commitment to quality, customer satisfaction and a passion for the outdoors.
JD specialises in clothing and footwear and they make clothing for men, women and juniors. Big brands such as Adidas, Nike and Fred Perry sell their goods to JD and then JD sells the goods to the public. This is a good thing as all of the biggest brands are available on one website.... ... middle of paper ...
Guess?, Inc. designs, markets, and distributes clothing apparel and accessories for men and women. It was created by three brothers, known as the Marciano brothers who grew up in Southern France. Maurice Marciano oversees the company’s design direction, Paul Marciano is the Co-Chairman and Co-chief officer, and Armand Marciano is the Senior Executive Vice President . They were inspired by the American western tradition to begin the clothing designs of Guess ?. After Bloomingdale’s agreed to purchase two dozen of their jeans as a favor they were sold out with in hours. That’s when, in 1981, the official Guess ? label was born, and would become one of the most recognized brand names.
The U.S. textile industry is one of the major source of employment in the manufacturing sector, with 232,000 workers. The United States is a globally competitive manufacturer of textiles, including textile raw materials, yarns, fabrics, apparel and home furnishings, and other textile finished products. The industry’s specializes is in cotton, manmade fibers, and a wide variety of yarns and fabrics. The Textile industry is technologically advanced joined with a highly skilled workforce, with an investment of $1.6 billion in total capital expenditures in 2013. In recent years, U.S. textile companies have focused on retooling their businesses, finding more effective work processes, investing in niche products and markets, and controlling
Sainsbury's was founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary Ann Sainsbury in London. The company has evolved in to one of the largest UK’s largest retailers. Sainsbury employs about 157,000 people in UK spread across 1,106 supermarkets, convenience stores and online groceries. The company opened 14 new supermarket stores in the last financial year with 8 extensions and there were 87 convenience stores added to Sainsbury’s list. The company has declared profits of £756M in 2013-14.
Levi Strauss came to America in 1853 and opened his own shop to supply miners with daily necessities. Upon hearing of the need for stronger pants, Strauss took the responsibility of creating pants that meet miner’s needs. He took brown canvas from a tent and created a pair of pants. These waist overalls, as they were often referred to, were strong enough, but were not comfortable. Strauss then switched to denim. He had found a comfortable, suitable article of clothing for miners and other hard workers. They were almost perfect.
I believe that if Levi’s had recognized the market demands the time it start to change and
Paul Van Doren, his brother Jim Van Doren, friend Gordon Lee, and Belgium Serge D’Elia founded vans in the year 1966. Together the men built a factory at 704 Broadway Street, in March of 1966. Vans soles were thicker then any shoe of the time. The company used better canvas and different thread so the shoes could withstand anything. Vans first started by opening ten stores in ten weeks. A year and a half later there were now 50 Vans stores. In 1975, vans realized that they had a large amount of customers who were skateboarders. Noticing how the skaters wore out the toe and hell of the shoes, Vans started making tat park of th...
In the world of fashion, there is denim. It is one of the world’s oldest fabrics, and has been modified and remodelled to go with the latest fashion trends. The first ones who wore this fabric are workers in the California Gold Rush era, designed by Jacob Davis because of its sturdy material that withstood the harsh working conditions. Not just them, even sailors from Italy use this material too as their sailing uniform. Then, it started appearing as an actor’s apparel, and that’s when denim started to become one of a fashion item. People started wearing jeans as part of their daily apparel and even adding their own ideas, such as studs and colouring it with different shades of denim. It doesn’t only stop around that era, but today, they are seen everywhere and has become a major clothing piece for almost all of the age groups. As a reference, we can see young children already wears jeans as part of their clothing, the teenagers added jeans to their wardrobe, and even for the seniors, they consider jeans as a simple and comfortable clothing pieces.