Topic Tuesday

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LEVI JEANS

Levi Strauss & Co. was a privately held American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's  brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853 when German immigrant 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 in the Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.

Origin and formation (1853–1890s)

Levi Strauss started the business at the 90 Sacramento Street address in San Francisco and then moved the location to 62 Sacramento Street.[citation needed] In 1858, the company was listed as Strauss, Levi (David Stern & Lewis Strauss) importers clothing etc. 63 & 65 Sacramento St. in the San Francisco Directory with Strauss serving as its sales manager and his brother-in-law, David Stern, as its manager. Jacob Davis, a Latvian Jewish immigrant, was a Reno, Nevada[10] 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.

Growth in popularity (1910s–1960s)

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.

Blue jeans era (1960s–1980s)

A pair of Levi's 501 raw jeans

From the early 1960 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 stone-washed jeans through the acquisition of Great Western Garment Company (GWG), a Canadian clothing manufacturer acquired by Levi's. The acquisition led to the introduction of the modern "stone washing" technique, still in use by Levi Strauss. 

Brand competition (1990s)

By the 1990s, Levi's faced 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 became implicated in a scandal involving pants made in the Northern Mariana Islands: some 3% of Levi's jeans sold annually with the Made in the USA label were shown[by whom?] to have been made by Chinese laborers under what the United States Department of Labor called "slavelike" conditions. As of 2016, 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.

The annual sales of the brand increased in 1997 to reach $7.1 billion.

Recent developments (2000–present)

A Levi's outlet store in Vaughan Mills, a mall in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada

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. 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. Levi's has successfully sued Guess, Polo Ralph Lauren, Esprit Holdings, Zegna, Zumiez, and Lucky Brand Jeans, among other companies.

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