History

Levi Strauss started the business at the 90 Sacramento Street address in San Francisco with
entrepreneur William Price. He next moved the location to 62 Sacramento Street then 63 & 65
Sacramento Street.
[citation needed]
Jacob Davis, a Latvian Jewish immigrant, was a Reno, Nevada
[3]

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.
[4]
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.
[citation needed]

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. Levis
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.
[5]
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.
[6]

1960s1980s

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by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and
removed. (May 2014)
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, 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 Levi's. The acquisition lead
to the introduction of the modern "stone washing" technique, still in use by Levi Strauss.
Simpkins is credited with the company's record paced expansion of its manufacturing capacity
from 16 plants to more than 63 plants in the United States from 1964 to 1974 and 23 overseas.
Levi's' expansion under Simpkins was accomplished without a single unionized employee as a
result of Levi's' and the Haas family's' strong stance on human rights and Simpkins' use of "pay
for performance" manufacturing from the sewing machine operator level up. As a result, Levi's'
plants were perhaps the highest performing, best organized and cleanest textile facilities of their
time.
The Dockers brand, launched in 1986 which is sold largely through department store chains,
helped the company grow through the mid-1990s, as denim sales began to fade. Dockers were
introduced into Europe in 1996. Levi Strauss attempted to sell the Dockers division in 2004 to
relieve part of the company's $2.6 billion outstanding debt.
1990s and later

Levi's 506 inside

A Levi's outlet store in Canada
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.
[7][8][9]
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.
[10]
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.
[11][12][13]

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 collateral relatives of
Levi Strauss, whose four nephews inherited the San Francisco dry goods firm after their uncle's
death in 1902.
[14]
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.
[15]

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.
[16]

Levi Strauss Signature jeans can now be purchased at several stores in the US, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan and Japan.
According to The New York Times,
[citation needed]
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.
[17]
Levi's has successfully sued
Guess?, Polo Ralph Lauren, Esprit Holdings, Zegna, Zumiez and Lucky Brand Jeans, among
other companies.
[18]

In 2002, the company closed its Valencia Street plant in San Francisco, which had opened the
same year of the city's April April 1906 earthquake.
[19][20]
by the end of 2003, the closure of
Levi's last U.S. factory in San Antonio ended 150 years of its jeans being made in the USA.
[20]

By 2007, Levi Strauss was again said to be profitable after declining sales in nine of the previous
ten years.
[21]
Its total annual sales, of just over $4 billion, were $3 billion less than during its peak
performance
[20]
in the mid-1990s.
[22]
After more than two decades of family ownership, rumors
of a possible public stock offering were floated in the media in July 2007.
[23]
In 2009, it was
noted in the media for selling Jeans on interest-free credit, due to the global recession.
[24][25]
In
2010, the company partnered with Filson, an outdoor goods manufacturer in Seattle, to produce a
high-end line of jackets and workwear.
[26]

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 twenty
years, with an option to extend the deal for another five years for around $75 million.
[27]

Advertising

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by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and
removed. (May 2014)
Levi's marketing 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.
SAN FRANCISCO From the cotton field in rural India to the local rag bin, a typical pair of blue jeans
consumes 919 gallons of water during its life cycle, Levi Strauss & Company says, or enough to fill about
15 spa-size bathtubs. That includes the water that goes into irrigating the cotton crop, stitching the
jeans together and washing them scores of times at home.
The company wants to reduce that number any way it can, and not just to project environmental
responsibility. It fears that water shortages caused by climate change may jeopardize the
companys very existence in the coming decades by making cotton too expensive or scarce.
So to protect its bottom line, Levi Strauss has helped underwrite and champion a nonprofit
program that teaches farmers in India, Pakistan, Brazil and West and Central Africa the latest
irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques. It has introduced a brand featuring stone-washed
denim smoothed with rocks but no water. It is sewing tags into all of its jeans urging customers
to wash less and use only cold water.
To customers seeking further advice, Levi Strauss suggests washing jeans rarely, if at all the
theory being that putting them in the freezer will kill germs that cause them to smell.
Conservation worries are not limited to the clothing giants: food and beverage conglomerates,
tobacco companies and metal and mining companies are all starting to reckon with their heavy
dependence on water. Pepsico, for example, has embraced a method of sanitizing plastic bottles
with purified air instead of water at a plant in Georgia. For its Frito-Lay brands, it has identified
drought-resistant potato strains that it provides to farmers along with a soil-monitoring method
so that crops are watered only when necessary.
The Carbon Disclosure Project, a group that monitors corporations greenhouse gas emissions,
recently added water security to its priorities. Of the 150 companies that responded last year to a
questionnaire that it sent to the worlds largest corporations, nearly 40 percent reported that
water problems had already resulted in detrimental impacts to their businesses.
The threat of water shortages was brought home to Levi Strauss last year when floods in Pakistan
and parched fields in China destroyed cotton crops and sent prices soaring. Roughly two pounds
of cotton go into every pair of jeans that the company manufactures. Although scientists are wary
of linking specific extreme weather events to climate change, recent increases in floods and
droughts are in line with patterns that experts have long projected would result from global
warming. The general rule of thumb is that wet regions will get wetter and dry regions will
become even more arid.
Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia Universitys Earth Institute,
said that the local implications of those changes were still being sorted out but that agriculture,
which does best with a relatively consistent supply of water, will be impacted the most.
That is particularly the case for cotton, the worlds biggest nonfood crop. Many big cotton-
producing countries like India, which has tens of thousands of small cotton farmers, lack the
reservoirs to store water, heightening the risk of shortages.
Companies doing business overseas are also contending with rising water costs or water that is
not clean enough. Then there is the threat of bad publicity if a corporation is perceived to be
squandering precious local water.
The total volume of water used by a single beverage business, for example, may not be much,
Dr. Lall said. But they are often the most visible users in a locality, depleting groundwater
much more quickly than, say, a small farmer.
It is not lost on American and European manufacturers that cotton already competes with grain
for what arable land exists in some regions, a tension that will only grow as the world seeks to
feed its growing population in coming decades.
Making Better Cotton
Because cotton is mostly grown by a diffuse network of very small farmers in more than 70
countries, encouraging water-efficient practices is a formidable challenge. Cotton cultivation
accounts for more than 3 percent of the worlds agricultural water use and 6 percent of all
pesticide purchases. Outmoded practices like field flooding contribute to overconsumption.
In 2005, nongovernmental and cotton industry organizations and some giant retailers, including
Ikea, the Gap and Adidas, founded the international nonprofit Better Cotton Initiative to promote
water conservation and reduce pesticide use and child-labor practices in the industry.
Levi Strauss joined in 2009. Partners include groups like Cotton Inc., an American industry
association that has provided technical know-how. A three-year independent study of Indian
farms found those adopting the new techniques reduced water and pesticide use by an average of
32 percent, the initiative says. The profit was 20 percent higher than that of a control group using
traditional methods.
Kailash Himmitrao Mahalle grows cotton in Shelu, India, about 90 miles east of Mumbai. On
one side of his 15-acre farm, which was used to compare methods, the cotton plants are about a
foot taller and bear more flowers than the ones on the other side. The lusher field has a drip
irrigation system a tangle of plastic veins that direct water to each plants root system that
was installed with advice from the Better Cotton Initiative.
Mr. Mahalle said the drip system spreads water and fertilizer more evenly than traditional
pumping, and because it puts water only where it is needed, it also results in fewer weeds.
Power failures, commonplace in India, are less worrisome now because drip irrigation does not
require electricity over an extended period of time, as traditional irrigating methods do. This
takes three hours; that takes three days, Mr. Mahalle said, and his water use is down by about
70 percent.
The resulting crop from the new methods of farming is now referred to by Levi Strauss and the
initiative as better cotton. Levi Strausss top management says that about 5 percent of the
cotton used in the two million pairs of jeans the company shipped to stores this fall was grown
with the sustainable method. The company wants that number to rise to 20 percent by 2015.
Ikea, the furniture chain, hopes to be using better cotton exclusively by 2015. The footwear
maker Adidas has said it will do the same by 2018.
To reach its 20 percent goal, Levi Strauss says it must radically change how it does business,
engaging more directly with contractors as well as farmers. There was a time when American
corporations preferred not to know what was going on in foreign factories to afford them
maximum deniability in the event that poor labor or environmental practices were discovered.
Levi Strauss, which reported $4.4 billion in net revenue last year, would not reveal how much it
is spending on water sustainability efforts, beyond saying that the company and its foundation
have given a combined $600,000 to the Better Cotton Initiative since 2009.