Levi Strauss & Co. 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. The company's corporate headquarters is located at Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.
History/Sejarah
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 Latvian Jewish immigrant, was a Reno, Nevada
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. 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 Levis 501 Jeans in
the 1890s, a style that went on to become the world's best selling item
of clothing.
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.
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. 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. 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.*Kalau nak bercerita pasal Levi's ni sampai esok tak habis. Bozzo akan cuba updatekan apa-apa cerita menarik pasal Levi's dari masa ke semasa. FYI-501 adalah seluar fevret bozzo.
*words via wiki.pictures via google.
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