Levi Strauss & Co.
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| Gangartiiii bahasanyaaa di translate aja ada ko di bagian atas di bawah kolom label.. itu detailnya... hahaha sepele |
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| References: [2] |
Levi Strauss & Co. /ˌliːvaɪ ˈstrɔːs/, also known as
LS&CO or simply
Levi's, is a privately held American
clothing company known worldwide for its
Levi's brand of
denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when
Levi Strauss came from
Buttenheim,
Bavaria, to
San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York
dry goods
business. In 1873, Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis received a U.S.
patent to make the first riveted men's work pants out of denim: the
first blue jeans. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with a
public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants
and relatives of Levi Strauss's four nephews. The company's corporate
headquarters is located at
Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.
[3]
Organization
Levi Strauss & Co. is a worldwide corporation organized into
three geographic divisions: Levi Strauss Americas (LSA), based in the
San Francisco headquarters; Levi Strauss Europe, Middle East and Africa
(LSEMA), based in
Brussels; and Asia Pacific Division (APD), based in
Singapore.
The company employs a staff of approximately 10,500 people worldwide.
The core Levi's was founded in 1873 in San Francisco, specializing in
riveted denim jeans and different lines of casual and street fashion.
[4]
From the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, Levi Strauss experienced
significant growth in its business as the more casual look of the 1960s
and 1970s ushered in the "blue jeans craze" and served as a catalyst for
the brand. Levi's, under the leadership of Walter Haas Jr., Peter Haas,
Ed Combs, and Mel Bacharach, expanded the firm's clothing line by
adding new fashions, including stone-washed jeans through the
acquisition of
Great Western Garment Co. (GWG), a Canadian clothing manufacturer, and introducing Permanent Press trousers under the Sta-prest name.
The company experienced rapid expansion of its manufacturing capacity
from 16 plants to more than 63 plants in the United States from 1964 to
1974 and 23 overseas. They used "pay for performance" manufacturing
from the sewing machine operator level up.
2004 saw a sharp decline of GWG in the face of global outsourcing, so
the company was closed and the Edmonton manufacturing plant shut down.
[5] The
Dickers brand, launched in 1986
[6]
which is sold largely through department store chains, helped the
company grow through the mid-1990s, as denim sales began to fade.
Dickers were introduced into Europe in 199b. Levi Strauss attempted to
sell the Dockers division in 2004 to relieve part of the company's $2.6
billion outstanding debt.
[7]
Launched in 2003, Levi Strauss Signature features jeanswear and casualwear.
[8]
In November 2007, Levi's released a mobile phone in co-operation with
ModeLabs. Many of the phone's cosmetic attributes are customisable at
the point of purchase.
History
Levi Strauss started the business at the 90 Sacramento Street address
in San Francisco. He next moved the location to 62 Sacramento Street
then 63 & 65 Sacramento Street.
Jacob Davis, a
Jewish emigrant from
Latvia, was a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth made from
hemp[citation needed]
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.
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 then created their first pair of Levis 501
Jeans in the 1890s, a style that went on to become the world's best
selling item of clothing.
[9]
Levi Strauss advertising sign
Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s, but sales were largely
confined to the working people of the western United States, such as
cowboys, lumberjacks, and railroad workers. Levi’s jeans apparently were
first introduced to the East during the
dude ranch
craze of the 1930s, when vacationing Easterners returned home with
tales (and usually examples) of the hard-wearing pants with rivets.
Another boost came in World War II, when blue jeans were declared an
essential commodity and were sold only to people engaged in defense
work. From a company with fifteen salespeople, two plants, and almost no
business east of the Mississippi in 1946, the organization grew in
thirty years to include a sales force of more than 22,000, with 50
plants and offices in 35 countries.
[10]
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Levi's jeans became popular among a wide range of youth subcultures, including
greasers,
mods,
rockers,
hippies and
skinheads.
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. 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 company's
president got too close to a campfire, and the rivet at the bottom of
the crotch conducted the fire's heat too well; the offending rivet,
which is depicted in old advertisements, was removed.
[11]
1990s and later
By the 1990s, the brand was facing competition from other brands and
cheaper products from overseas, and began accelerating the pace of its
US factory closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements.
In 1991, Levi Strauss faced a scandal involving pants made in the
Northern Mariana Islands, where some 3% of Levi's jeans sold annually with the
Made in the USA label were shown to have been made by Chinese laborers under what the
United States Department of Labor
called "slavelike" conditions. Today, most Levi's jeans are made
outside the US, though a few of the higher end, more expensive styles
are still made in the U.S.
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.
[12][13][14]
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) was 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.
[15]
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 of the company's labor policies.
[16][17][18]
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 San Francisco dry goods firm
after their uncle's death in 1902.
[19] 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.
[20] In 2002, Levi Strauss began a close business collaboration with
Walmart, producing a special line of "Signature" jeans and other clothes for exclusive sale in
Walmart stores until 2006.
[21] Levi Strauss Signature jeans can now be purchased at several stores in the US, Canada, India, Pakistan and Japan.
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 double arc
stitching pattern (U.S.
trademark #1,139,254), which Levi filed for trademark in 1978.
[22] Levi's has successfully sued
Guess?,
Polo Ralph Lauren,
Esprit Holdings,
Zegna,
Zumiez and
Lucky Brand Jeans, among other companies.
[23]
By 2007, Levi Strauss was again said to be profitable after declining sales in nine of the previous ten years.
[24] Its total annual sales, of just over $4 billion, were $3 billion less than during its peak performance in the mid-1990s.
[25]
After more than two decades of family ownership, rumors of a possible
public stock offering were floated in the media in July 2007.
[26] In 2009, it was noted in the media for selling Jeans on interest-free credit, due to the
global recession.
[27][28] In 2010, the company partnered with
Filson, an outdoor goods manufacturer in Seattle, to produce a high-end line of jackets and workwear.
[29]
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 calls for Levi's to pay $220.3 million to the
city of Santa Clara and the 49ers over 20 years, with an option to
extend the deal for another five years for around $75 million.
[30]
Advertising
Levi's marketing style has often made use of old recordings of popular music in
television commercials, ranging from
traditional pop to
punk rock. Notable examples include
Ben E King ("
Stand By Me"),
Percy Sledge ("
When a Man Loves a Woman"),
Eddie Cochran ("
C'mon Everybody!"),
Marc Bolan ("
20th Century Boy"),
Screamin' Jay Hawkins ("
Heart Attack & Vine"),
The Clash ("
Should I Stay or Should I Go?"), as well as lesser known material, such as "Falling Elevators" and "The City Sleeps" by
MC 900 Ft. Jesus and "Flat Beat" and "Monday Massacre" by
Mr. Oizo.
Many of these songs were re-released by their record labels as a
tie-in
with the ad campaigns, resulting in increased popularity and sales of
the recordings and the creation of iconic visual associations with the
music, such as the use of a topless male model wearing jeans underwater
in the 1986 adverts featuring "Wonderful World" and "Mad about the Boy"
and the puppet, Flat Eric, in the ads featuring music by Mr. Oizo.
