LEVI'S: The Patent Advantage of Being First

We'd never suggest sitting around and waiting for a great business idea to land in your lap, but that's kinda the story behind Levi Strauss & Co.  In this week's episode of Bizography, we dig into the family, the philosophy, and first-ness that helped Levi's become the iconic brand it is today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know that old adage luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Well,
I think that philosophy is the key to the Levi's story.
That and a good old fashioned patent. This is Bisiography,

(00:26):
the show where we dive into the strange but true
stories of iconic companies. Whether they're a current bright star,
in the midst of a massive dumpster fire, or settling
into the dust heap of history, they all have a
past worth knowing. I'm Dana Barrett. I'm a former tech
executive and entrepreneur and a TV and radio host, and
over the course of my career, I've interviewed thousands of

(00:47):
business leaders and reported on the bright beginnings and massive
flame outs of the brands we know and love. Some
of their stories are unexpected, some are infuriating, and some
make you think, hey, maybe I could do that. From
a clothing perspective, there may not be a brand as
iconic as Levies, no matter how hard others try. Like
the Jeans, the brand feels almost effortless, kind of like

(01:12):
my co host and producer Nick Meade Dane not wait wait, wait,
do you mean I'm effortlessly iconic or iconically effortless? Good question. Um,
we'll go with the first. I think we'll go with
the first. You are right though, right when you think jeans,
you think of a little a little red bat wing
logo with Levi's across it, right, Yeah, I know for

(01:34):
me Levi's growing up or kind of two things. They
were like a staple, like you had to have Levi's,
but they were also utterly cool. You know. There were
some staples that you had to have growing up, like
your lunchbox or whatever that maybe weren't as cool, but
Levi's were always cool. Now, mind you, I did grow
up in the seventies and eighties, and by the eighties

(01:55):
the designer gene trend was in full swing, and so
I did by into that whole thing. But really, in college,
for men and women, a worn in pair of Levi's
was always cool. And to tell the truth, one of
the biggest fights I ever got into, maybe in my
entire life, was with my college roommate, and it was
over a pair of Levi's. She trying to take them
from you or something. It's kind of the opposite. Oh, Dan,

(02:19):
it's a long story. We'll say that. We'll save that
one for a whole other podcast. We'll start a podcast
called My Roommate Stories. And yeah, um, but if you
had to guess the backstory of Levi's nick, or you
think you already know it, what would you assume the
story is right? So I would assume that back before
they even had those moving pictures, they had, um, some

(02:42):
guy named Levi or strousse Levi Strouse, maybe two guys right,
got together and and made pants for people that needed
strong pants. That would be my assumption. Right, Well, some
of that is right, but some of it not quite
exactly right. So let's go back to the very beginning.
Once upon a time there was a guy named Levi

(03:05):
strouss just one guy, Levi strouss Uh. He was born
in eighteen twenty nine in Buttenheim, Bavaria, on February six,
and he was one of a big family, three older brothers,
three older sisters. And fast forward to eighteen forty six,
shortly after their father died, Levi and his sisters emigrated

(03:26):
to New York City. Now they're two older brothers had
already gone, they already lived there, and they had started
a dry goods business called J. Strauss brother and Company.
And when Levi I got there he started to learn
the business. He was there for you know, several years,
and then in eighteen fifty three, while the California gold
rush was in full swing, he decided to head out

(03:48):
to San Francisco to start up a wholesale dry goods
business as sort of the West Coast representative of the
business the family already had going in New York. So
Levi goes out there and eventually renames his company Levi
Strouss and Company, which honestly was a better name than J.
Strouss brother and Company. Rolls off the tongue little easier, Yeah,

(04:08):
Levi strous and Company. So he's out there doing his thing.
He's got his dry goods wholesale business. He's selling. You know,
we don't call stores that anymore, really, but if it
is exactly what it sounds like, a business that's sold
dry stuff, you know, not produce, but like flower and
fabric and all kinds of stuff, sort of a general store,

(04:29):
if you will, I feel like you can picture it
almost like little house on the Prairie style, you know. Um,
but that's exactly what Levi Strouss and Company was. So on,
this business goes and it wasn't until twenty years later
that blue jeans were born twenty years so he was
a businessman running Levi Strouss and Co. For two decades
before Levies as we know them even came into existence.

(04:52):
Right But fun fact and a major important part of
the story that I think a lot of people don't
know that the genes themselves weren't invented by Levi. So
two years after Levi was born in Bavaria, a man
named Jacob Davis was born not too far away in Latvia.
He too emigrated to the US in the eighteen forties,

(05:14):
and he too headed out to San Francisco during the
eighteen fifties that after a since there, Jacob actually ended
up in Reno, Nevada, where he set up shop as
a tailor. He was buying fabric, as it turned out,
from Levi Strauss because that was just the closest and
best place to get what he needed. In eighteen seventy,
so the story goes, a woman came to Jacob for

(05:36):
a pair of cheap pants for her large husband, who
had the habit of going through pants rather quickly, having
found that thread alone did not always adequately hold the
pockets onto work pants. Jacob decided to try out rivets
because they had worked pretty well on horse blankets in
the past. Okay, that's actually okay, So the thread wasn't enough,

(05:57):
Let's bring metal into the equation. Let's rivet these things together.
So by eight seventy one, Jacob Davis was routinely using
rivets on the pants he made. First he was using
it on cotton duck, and then soon after he started
using it on denim, which already existed. And then words
sort of spread because these pants were lasting longer than others,
and so they started to become popular with the laborers

(06:20):
along the railroad there. It wasn't too long before Jacob
realized he was having trouble keeping up with demand, which
was great, But what wasn't so great about it was
that he was beginning to be imitated by other tailors,
and he got concerned. So in eighteen seventy two, Jacob
wrote a letter to Levi S. Trousse, the owner of
that dry goods store in San Francisco where he bought

(06:40):
his fabric, and he asked Levice strous to partner with him.
He explained that he wanted to patent this new idea
because he was afraid of the competition. He said in
the letter quote, my neighbors are getting yellous of these successes,
and unless I secure it by patent papers, it will
soon become to be a general thing. Everybody will make
them up, and they will be no money in it unquote.

(07:02):
And the reason he needed help, he says in the
letter quote, I am so situated with a large family
that I cannot do anything with it at present. Therefore,
as I have said, if you wish to take out
the papers, please go to Dewey and Company of the
Centrific Press and have the papers made out in my
name for seventeen years, and they will send them up
to me for signature unquote. So I read it that way,

(07:26):
because that's exactly how it is in the letter itself.
With his accent. He didn't have English as a native language,
and of course they didn't have schools, uh, the way
we do now. But the thing is he didn't trust
his neighbors because they were yellous. But he did trust
this merchant in another city, Levi Strauss, so much, in fact,

(07:47):
that he sent along with that very first letter, two
examples of the pants themselves and the plans that he
wanted to have patented, and he also sent along his
share of the money to get the patent. Wow, I
can only imagine that that they had to at least
have a little bit of knowledge of each other's background. Which,
come on, you both were born not that far across
the other side of the world near each other. There's

(08:08):
a little bit of fate involved here. But yeah, as
long as you've been doing business with somebody, you kind
of earned that trust right. And there were also I
don't know if this is relevant or not, but they
were also both Jewish, so there may have been some
you know, community since there that they had each other's back. Um.
And in fact, Jacob did have a large family by
the way, he had eight kids, and while he didn't

(08:29):
seem to have an issue with his invention of these
riveted pants not taking his name, his children, as a
fun little side note, did start a clothing business called
Ben Davis Clothing and that exists to this very day.
In fact, you can see the entire text from that
letter that I was just reading on the Ben Davis
Clothing website, and if you want to check it out,

(08:50):
we've got a link to it on our website at
bisography dot Show. That's what we call a shameless self
plug right there. So Levi Strauss could have literally have
just stolen the idea and run with it. He had
everything he needed, he had the papers, he had the pants,
but he didn't. He was the right guy to trust,
and in event, three blue jeans as we know them

(09:11):
today were born. The patent was granted to Jacob Davis
and Levi Strauss and Company on May of that year.
But why are they blue? And if you were coming
up with a new style of pants today, would you
even think of getting a patent for it? We'll get
into the blue color and the history of patents right
after this, all right, so let's talk patents. According to

(09:41):
up council dot com, the concept of the patent dates
back to six hundred BC. The first patent was for
some kind of quote new fangled loaf of bread unquote,
And as far back as five dred BC, chefs in
Cybrus had the option to have up to a year
of profit on a unique dish they created. And these
are kind of thought to be the first known references

(10:02):
to intellectual property protection. A couple hundred years later, Vitruvius,
who was a judge in ancient Alexandria tried a couple
of poets and found them guilty of stealing the material
of other poets, essentially plagiarizing. After that, Romans debated different
types of ownership for different kinds of intellectual property, but

(10:23):
they didn't actually create laws or patents to govern the matter.
But it was part of what was beginning to happen.
And it wasn't until the guild system, which was in
the Middle Ages, that the protection of actual intellectual properties
started to take hold, So patents weren't really used yet
then either. But the guilds did very heavily protect the
different techniques they had for their chosen crafts, and they

(10:46):
were very secretive and prevented as much as they could
that information from getting out to the public. Fast forward
to the Venetian Act of fourteen seven du four. They
feel very intellectual just saying that the Venetian Act was
the first known sort of codified patent system in Europe.
Patents were already now in existence, but they were sort

(11:06):
of different from place to place, and there were no
real set of standards. This Act in fourteen seventy four
began to streamline this process and make it simpler, so
that anyone could apply for a patent and they knew
how to categorize what they were asking for and they
knew how to defend their patent right. So it kind
of gave a system as to this is what I'm doing,
this is how I'm doing it, versus like ha ha,
well this isn't exactly the same, so okay, right, So

(11:29):
this was sort of the first, you know, the first
real go at putting this into law. So that stood
for a long time, a couple hundred years. It was
almost two years later, sixteen twenties when the British Statute
of Monopolies came to be. James the First made a
Royal proclamation in SI that move this even further. And

(11:54):
if you think about it, what they added here essentially
was that you had this patent that had to now
for an original invention and it had to be for
a specific time period. So that wasn't the case before
you sort of had a patent and it was yours,
and it wasn't clear that it really had to be
an original invention, like maybe people were just sort of
patenting regular stuff like here's a coffee cup. I'm good

(12:15):
a patent, Yeah, so now they said no, no no, you
can't really do this. And the reason that this happened
is because Parliament wanted to prevent the monarch from just
giving patents to anybody. He liked, Oh, that's a good point.
You have to have real causation. You can't just have
the king like you it's yours. And that sort of
is the basis of really a lot of what has

(12:36):
happened with patents ever since. Now. In the US, we
had patents in a very unorganized way in the early
days of the country, but in the first Patent Act
of the US became law, and that again also is
sort of very similar to how things uh go even
now in modern times. There are all different kinds of patents.

(12:57):
Some are really long in terms of number of years,
some are really short, uh and it really just depends.
There's a lot of different categories now and it's a
fairly complex system. But getting back to our story with
Levi Strauss and Jacob and the Pants, I feel like
that should be the title Jacob in the Pants. Um.

(13:18):
I would not have thought that patents were common in
the clothing industry or in the fashion world. It just
doesn't seem intuitive to me. Right. Yeah, you know, a
shoe is a shoe, pants, his pants, shirt is a shirt.
I mean pants, his pants and pants. You would think,
But it turns out that patents are granted in the
fashion world far more than I certainly knew. After doing

(13:40):
just a little bit of research, I found some interesting examples.
Spanks has more than a dozen patents, Victoria's Secret has
over eighty, although not all of those are for clothing,
but still over eight Wait for it, Dior has over
two hundred, and Nike over eight thou in different patents.

(14:01):
What yeah, really, wow, this must be incredibly nuanced, like
the little nitty gritty details of the groove and the
soul of a shoe, right right, I mean the patents
can be anything from the lace, a special new kind
of shoe lace, or a soul of the shoe or
yeah so's yeah, it's crazy. And of course, you know,

(14:24):
Nike does make a ton of different kinds of products
across a whole bunch of different kinds of sports. So
in any case, over eight thousand patents for Nike and
that was just on a quick search on the patent website. Patents,
of course, have a huge advantage that come with them
which is why people go after them, and that is
they give you a competitive advantage. You get a patent,

(14:45):
you get to produce and make your things solely and exclusively,
and no one else can make it for X number
of years. So getting back to Levi's, that's exactly what
happened for Levi's. When you think of blue jeans today,
you think Levi's, it's because they had a mass of
headstart on not only just blue jeans, but blue jeans
that held together longer than any others with those rivets. Yeah,

(15:07):
the rivets are important, but the blue right is also
important because you just said it blue jeans. We usually
say blue jeans, but do you know why they're blued?
I mean, I really don't. I feel like I have
this vague memory. In one of my many midlife crisises,
I went back to design school and I had this
teacher in fabrics. I went for interior design, and so

(15:30):
she was like a fabrics specialist who talked about the
color indigo, and I sort of vaguely remember something about
jeans as it related to that. But no, I guess
I would just assume because it's like prettier than the babe,
So right, they used the beige like the duck right,
it's kind of a brownish color. And they also happened
to use indigo because well, Levi Strauss, being a dry

(15:52):
goods owner, just had some on hand when they were
working on some of the first pairs of pants, so
they figured brown hide stains were king Man right. Blue
also do a good job of hiding stains. That was
the initial reasoning behind the indigo. But as they started
getting into making it more, all of a sudden they
realized that the indigo die did a little bit something

(16:13):
different with the actual fabric than the brown die. So quick,
quick and easy die lesson most dies. When you die something,
it goes all the way through the fabric right, the
whole the whole strand, so to speak, becomes that color.
Indigo didn't do that. Indigo just attached to the outside
threads of the denom It didn't get all the way through.

(16:34):
The benefit of this is that as you wash it,
what happens to your blue jeans after you wash them
two or three times, they get soft, right, they get
that broken in feeling. And people loved it. Levi Strauss
didn't really notice. Nobody else noticed. It's just all of
a sudden, all the brown pants are still up, but
these blue ones are flying off the shelves. That's why
blue became the de facto color for jeans. So that

(16:57):
must be what I remember something about the indigo, The
quality of indigo itself as a natural material had that property.
So yeah, okay, it was in my brain somewhere. Yeah,
you were right, you weren't far off. I thought that
was pretty interesting and nowadays, right, we still get that
feeling right when you wear your your jeans and we
but they don't use normal and natural indigo anymore. It's
way too rare, way too many blue jeans out there.

(17:17):
They use synthetic die. Another quick thing that I found
was interesting is, just like anything else you wore that's
sewn together, there's kind of an up and down and
a left and right thread. Only the up and down
threads on your blue jeans are died with this synthetic die.
It allows those left and right threads to wear and
tear in the washing machine to give them that soft,

(17:38):
worn in, broken in feeling. So some creative somebody somewhere
figured out how to imitate real indigo the whole other process. Yeah, crazy,
because that's The key to blue jeans is the fact
that you can wear them and they feel like your jeans.
That's the whole point. Another interesting thing that I just
want to share. You know that little pocket in the
side that really isn't good for anything. That's like when

(18:00):
means has them to write like the little dumb pocket,
You're like, oh, I can fit a quarter, hooray. You
know why those were initially put into the jeans back
in the day, I do not. Well, they didn't have
watches like we do on our wrists, and they definitely
didn't have smartphones. They had pocket watches, but if you're
a laboring man out in the yard, you put it
in your normal pocket. Will your hammer and your nails
and whatever go else in there? Their watches would get
scratched up and broken. People didn't like it. Common sense

(18:22):
A We'll just put a little tiny pocket here for
just your watch, so you're watched it and get messed up.
So what's supposed to go in there? Is your pocket watch?
The watch pocket? I like it, all right? Who knew?
Look at us learning. But let's get back to our heroes.
So Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis they are together now
they've gotten this patent. It's eight seventy three. And by

(18:45):
the way, this is also the year that Davis adds
that now famous double orange threading that stitch on the
pockets to distinguish their jeans from others, because other companies
were making jeans and trying to compete. So essentially, through
the rest of the century, the business grew slow and steady,
and Levi continued to grow his business interests on the whole.

(19:07):
Here's just a couple of little fun facts from the time.
So Levi and a couple of associates purchased the Mission
and Pacific Woolen Mills. Okay, so he wanted to get
his hands on the product itself, right, he liked getting it.
He was in the fabric business now, so he wanted
to get further into it. He was also a director
of the Nevada Bank, uh, the Liverpool, London and Globe
Insurance Company, and the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company.

(19:31):
He was essentially just becoming a predominant businessman in San Francisco,
and maybe before his time in the diversify your holdings. Right,
he's got he's got pants, he's got a bank, he's
got insurance. I like this everything. He also became a
charter member and treasurer of the San Francisco Board of Trade.

(19:52):
That was in eighteen seventy seven. In eight six, as
the brand Levi, Strauss and Company, the jeans are continuing,
they introduced that two horse trademark, which depicts two horses
attempting to pull apart a pair of Levi's pants, and
this was to symbolize the strength of the clothing. Now,
fun fact, they weren't called jeans back then. They were

(20:14):
called waste overalls. What because think about it, the working
men were wearing overalls, and this was essentially overalls with
the top part cut off. Waste overalls. They still went
over everything, but only up to your waist. That's so
awkward to think of that nowadays, kids time to get dressed,

(20:35):
put on your waist overalls. I'm going to do that
the next time I get kids, the kids ready for school.
Just to see the look on his face. My what yeah, exactly? Okay.
So we progressed through the eighteen eighties into eighteen ninety.
That's the year that they created this idea of sizing
their pants as they were before they were shrunk. So

(20:56):
they were like this extra large sort of size. Then
you washed them and they shrunk down. But the sizing
had to do with how big they were ahead of time.
That was called the double X waste overall, and I
believe that sizing. I believe that still continues to this
day on a couple of the lines of Levi's. Anyway,
the first time they did that, it was on lot
number five oh one. Ring a bell. Yeah, isn't that

(21:18):
like Levi's most popular, like style the other jeans? Yeah,
So that started all the way back in Levi Strouss
provided the funds for twenty eight scholarships at Berkeley, all
of which are still in place today. I just want
to golf clad for that good job. How cool was

(21:38):
that he was a major philanthropist. Uh. In addition to
those scholarships, he was also a contributor to the Pacific
Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home, the Eureka Benevolent Society, and
the Hebrew Board of Relief. So he believed in giving
back and he made sure that he did that. He
passed away in two and he did not ever have

(21:59):
any kids, so he left his business to his nephews.
His estate on the whole amounted to six million dollars
at the time, and it was left to his four
nephews and some other family members, and a couple of
donations were also made to local funds and associations. So
I do have to say that when I saw these
on the notes, I had to do a little bit
of research. I looked it up. Take a guess, Dana,
how much do you think in like twenty nineteen dollars right,

(22:21):
modern money? How much six million dollars in nineteen two worth? Um,
I'm just gonna guess here. One billion, Oh, not quite
as much. A hundred and seventy nine million dollars, almost
a hundred and eighty millions perfectly. I perfosely tried to
guess big, just because I knew it was big. But obviously,

(22:42):
you know, I'm not a mathletettle hundred and eighty million
dollars to his nephews. Uncle. Yeah, he essentially made a
hundred eighty million dollars on Levi the equivalent and what
twenty something years right, because it was seventy three when
they incorporated, So it was wow, that's incredible. Yeah, here
is another little fun fact. Before we let Levi I

(23:02):
rest in peace. He never actually wore the genes himself
because they were for laborers and he was a businessman,
all right. So that's you know a little bit. And
I would wouldn't say negative mark against the man. He
had a status he had to uphold. It was the hundreds.
It's just the times. It wasn't. It wasn't him being
a snob. It's just the way it was. People would
have looked funny at him if he had worn them. Now,

(23:24):
Jacob Davis outlived levi Stress, but not by too much.
He passed away six years later in nine oh eight
in San Francisco. Of course, he had been there in
San Francisco all of those years after that partnership began,
working in the Levi's manufacturing plant. Wow. Yeah, But here's
the thing. While Levi's were a staple for working men

(23:46):
by that time, they were by no means iconic for
the rest of the world. So how do we go
from waste overalls for the working man to this iconic
like fashion symbol that is jeens today. Well they're a
story there and we'll talk about it next. So how

(24:08):
do pants worn by working men in the early dreds
become everybody pants in part it has to do with
the kind of company that Levi Strouss was and the
fact that they were able to persevere through history, basically
through all kinds of good and bad times. And I
feel like we need to talk about that before we

(24:29):
can really talk about how they became trendy. Right, Because
the genes, probably on their own, are gonna do it,
You're gonna have to have a good company making them
to keep them alive long enough to get popular, right, Yeah,
And they had to be well made, right, you couldn't be.
I mean when you think about how products are made today,
where everything is about doing it as cheaply as you
can and who cares if it falls apart in two seconds?
I mean that was sort of the antithesis of what

(24:51):
Levi Strouss was about. The rivets on the jeans and
the way they made the pants was to make them last.
I mean, that's who they were, both from a company
standpoint and a products standpoint. But Levi Strouse and Company,
I think found a lot of strength in being a
family business. That's who they were. Remember it started long
before the jeans with Levi's brothers, and later he brought

(25:13):
his own brother in law David Stern into the company.
Now Stern came into the company sort of in the
you know, eighteen seventies, but he passed away pretty young,
so he was only in the company for a short
period of time. Passed away in eighteen seventy five. But
he had four sons who when they got old enough,
all got involved in the business and ultimately they are

(25:36):
the ones that inherited it from Levi Strousse when he
passed away. So Jacob Stern, the oldest of the four nephews,
because of course Levi S. Trouse didn't have kids, so
that was the dale never married, didn't have kids, man
focused on his work. Well maybe, but you know, when
a man didn't get married. I'm not saying, I'm just saying, right,
when a man didn't get married back in the day,

(25:57):
you never know, right. In any case, he didn't have kids,
he'd never married, and so but he was a he
was a family man and he loved his brother's kids.
And so the four nephews are the ones who inherited.
And again Jacob, who was the oldest, ultimately became president
of the company after Levi Strauss and then in nineteen
nineteen Jacob brought his son in law, Walter Hass, on

(26:20):
board after Walter returned from fighting in World War One.
So this was just constantly never remember this, women weren't
really in business at the time, so these were brothers, nephews, sons,
son in laws that were being brought in generation after generation.
And of course we're fast forwarding through through time a
little bit here. But Walter Hass became president of the
company in ninety eight, So we worked there from nineteen

(26:42):
nineteen and worked his way up. He didn't just get
handed the presidency, but in nineteen he became president of
the company and he held that job until nineteen fifty five.
So Walter Hass Senior is really the one who is
credited with a lot of the success and survival of
the company. I mean, think about it. He took the
company through World War Two and that was a tough

(27:02):
time obviously economically, and uh, you know, also through the
Great Depression, so he weathered some major storms as the
president of that company. After his tenure as president, he
stayed on board and served as chairman until seventy and
then he remained active even after that until he died
in nineteen seventy nine. So this was a man who
committed his life. Wow, and that's the trend right all

(27:25):
the way back from Levi seems like all of these
folks involved are this is I stick to it literally
to death right. And some of the episodes we've talked
about on Phisiography in the past where founders died young,
or they didn't really turn things over to family members
or really put in writing the way they wanted their
businesses to go beyond them, how they wanted succession to
happen and all of that. Those are the ones that

(27:46):
sort of found themselves on the struggle bus to doomtown,
like Wells, Fargo and Sears. But the ones that were
either writing it down or or keeping careful watch had
different outcomes. And this company, I think because it was
so family oriented. You know, think about how people honor
their grandparents and their great grandparents and they talk about

(28:08):
what the values were, and if that was constantly they're
in the company at the board meetings and at the
executive level meetings, it stays embedded. And I think that's
you know, a lot of what is happening throughout the
history of Levi's. Because these men honored their great uncle,
they're great great uncle, their father, their brother in law,
you know all of that. It's much difference, more than

(28:29):
just a company to them, it's their family's legacy. Yeah.
Absolutely so. Hass and his business partner and brother in
law Daniel E. Koshland Sr. Also widely credited with the
global popularization of the Levi's brand. Of course this is
much much later. They also got credit sort of for
leading the company through the Great Depression. So this is

(28:49):
again Hass and this guy coosh Land, and also through
racial integration at their factories and and literally the family
is still involved to this day. I think it's the
rate great grand nephew, Peter Hass Jr. Who is still
on the board. It's amazing that the families that involved.
But we did say we were gonna get to about
how the genes got so popular. So which of these

(29:12):
guys involved in the family was the marketing genius that
made it happen? Dana? Which one wasn't? Was it Walter
has Senior? Alright, fair question. I am not sure that
Hass Senior was a marketing genius per se. I mean,
he probably had some savvy in that arena, but those
times were different. It wasn't about viral videos of course
back then, right um or you know Instagram influencers and

(29:32):
so um. I think his real strength was being savvy
enough to manage the company's growth, both through good times
and bad, and unlike some other companies we've talked about
on the show, he retained not only the family tradition
but company values even through those most difficult times. We'll
get to that part, those company values, because I think

(29:53):
it's important in a minute, but I don't want to
keep you waiting anymore. On the popularity piece, how did
everybody end up in blue chains? Out? Let's get to that.
So on our timeline, we were about kind of up
to the early nineteen hundreds, and in that era, the
company was making these working man's genes and selling them
more and more to you know, working Western men, cowboys,
railroad workers, lumberjacks. In the nineteen twenties, you know, because

(30:18):
the pants sort of morphed over time, and in the
nineteen twenties, the design of the genes started to look
a lot closer to how they look now. If you
go back and sort of look at the pictures, you recognize, oh,
that's really the genes. But really they were still just
being sold to those those particular uh men for those
particular reasons. I suspect, and I don't really know this,
but I suspect it sort of like they got home,

(30:39):
took a shower, and put on other pants, you know
what I meant. It was like the uniform sort of thing, right.
But it was in the nineteen thirties that jeans started
to appear in the Eastern United States, and the legend
has it that they were sort of brought home by
vacationing Easterners who had gone out west and were pressed

(31:00):
by the pants and how sturdy they were, because of
course the clothes they had didn't hold up if they
were out gardening or going to the factory jobs that
they had or whatever else. Interesting. I guess that would
be normal, right. You go somewhere and it's like someone
talks to about a garment of clothing. You're like, oh,
that's amazing. Rights, gonna get me one of them to
take it home, right, I think? I mean, look, people
still do that to this day, and that's how you

(31:20):
see a lot of fashion trend starting. They go somewhere
and they bring something back, and then you see prints
of fabric prints coming from all over the world, right,
In any case, that is sort of the legend. I
think there were probably multiple things happening around the same
time that brought the jeans east. And if we look
back again at some of our other episodes about things
that were happening in those eras, you know, trains were
moving product around. I mean, all of those things were

(31:42):
sort of happening at that time. But from a style standpoint,
that's the story. In the nine early nineteen thirties, as
those people, those people started wearing jeans, it was primarily men,
to be fair, wearing these pants, because women weren't wearing
pants really much at all, and if they were, they
weren't right because there were workers. It's made for the
men laborers, and women didn't work in those Some women worked,

(32:05):
but it wasn't commonplace for where to be working, and
they write, and they weren't working at the same kinds
of jobs generally speaking. And so in nineteen thirty four,
I actually could not believe this when I found it out,
and through our research, the first ever line of genes
for women was released by Levi Strouss in nineteen thirty four.
I would have assumed that didn't happen until the fifties.

(32:27):
I would think it would be almost like a more
of a fashion statement thing. And in the thirties, that
was right after the whole flapper movement, right when women
were just finally getting out of all dresses and skirts
all the time, right, And I don't think they were
really a fashion thing for women at that time. It
was more like a gardening thing or like if you
had work to do as a woman, you could wear
these pants too. And I think it wasn't really meant

(32:47):
for them to wear You didn't see them in the
thirties walking around on the streets in jeans. But you know,
it was actually sort of a statement coming from Levi's
about women at the time, and they were you know,
we had five oh ones that already were in his
read the first Ladies blue jeans. They were literally called
Ladies blue jeans. They were a lot seven oh one,
so they were the seven oh ones. And a little

(33:08):
fun fact, I think they just re released seven oh
ones recently as like a historical reference. Fun fact here
on the pants themselves. After the Riveted blue Jean patent
that Levi and Jacob had expired in their competitors of
course started to make riveted clothing too, so they needed
an easy way to sort of stand out from all

(33:29):
the other riveted jeans. So to that end, in nineteen
thirty six, they added and trademark that famous red tab
device as it is legally known, and added it to
the right back pocket of the five oh one jeans,
where it is still placed today. In fact, it's apparent
that the red tab is probably the most identifiable thing
about Levi's. I feel like it's the brown patch on

(33:50):
the back with the size the red tab to right.
I would definitely by far. You see somebody walking around
and you happened to see the backside and you noticed
the red tab, you know they got Levi's right right
then and there. Not that we would look at anybody's
on purpose, but it happens, you notice, sometimes it just happens.
We're not saying, we're just saying, all right, back to

(34:11):
this popularity question. So in thei and nineteen thirties, the
genes are getting more commonplace. But then in the nineteen forties,
during World War Two, blue jeans were actually declared an
essential commodity, and we're sold only to people who were
engaged in defense work. So you had to be working
like in a plant that was making airplane parts or
tank parts or whatever. Otherwise you couldn't get jeans. Wow,

(34:34):
So you could only buy them if you needed them, yeah,
for not even needed needed for war effort. Like it
was that limited because you know, times were tough, so
that I'm sure it was difficult on the company, but
actually I think it kind of made the genes more desirable, right, Yeah,

(34:56):
So that happened during the es and then really in
the nineteen fifties jeans took off. Levi's jeans became super
popular in the nineteen fifties with none other than the young.
It's always the young people, like today we blame everything
or give credit on everything to the millennials and gen z.
Then it was the so called greaser's you know, the mods,
the rockers, the hippies going through the fifties sixty seventies,

(35:19):
right that were embracing jeens young. So that that's really
how it happened. But it was a little by little
through the twenties, thirties and into the wartime in the forties,
and then we really had them hit their stride in
the nineteen fifties and interestingly enough, in the eighties when
fashion was you know, fashion changes every decade essentially, there's

(35:40):
a style we always associate decade by decade, but the
eighties was sort of a throwback fashion wise to the fifties,
So there was a lot of fifties look modified fifties
look in the eighties. Yeah. Also, just a little side
note here, the company was growing so much in that
era that in nineteen sixty five they actually went international

(36:02):
and had offices and factories throughout Europe and Asia, which
by the way, they're still of course international, but yeah,
that started in the nineties. Incredible, that's why wh not
everybody all over the world wears blue jeans now and
that's awesome. But now right, so now I'm going to
refer back again one more time because we were talking
about the family values, right, what what? What? What? All?
How much deeper did it go? Right? It's a family company,

(36:24):
But what more happens on that front? Yeah, I was
talking before about sort of just the family structure of
the business. We're doing one of those things on the
show that I do with like all of my friends
right now, which is we have like a million conversation
threads going and we just have to pull the right
one to keep the story going. So this particular thread
what I was referring to is, you know, not necessarily
the family structure now, but just the values of the

(36:45):
company that really came internally from the values of one man,
Levi Strauss. And so I don't know for sure that
there's a correlation between a family business and sort of
ethics and values. I mean, certainly not all family businesses
as our ethical I mean, you know, we know that,
But I think a lot of it had to do

(37:05):
with the family being there and staying true to that
legacy of Levi Strouss. Because remember, all the way back
in even Levi Strouss, among other things, provided the funds
for twenty eight scholarships at Berkeley. Uh. He was a
huge philanthropist. He was a contributor to a variety of
different charities back then, and he sort of passed that
along to the family members. Even the advent of ladies

(37:29):
levis in sort of showed their forward thinkingness, their progressiveness.
They were championing women and women's ability to do men's work.
So to speak. You need you're gonna do men's work,
you need men's pants. We believe you could do it,
So we're gonna make you a version of these pants.
And of course during World War Two we were talking
about the fact that the pants were limited and you

(37:49):
couldn't get them. But also during World War two the
company hired African American sewing machine operators and laborers and
their factories. Obviously that was way before in a great means,
there's the forties. That's a big deal. Then segregated military. Yeah, right,
and so they had employees that resisted that. Some employees
quit over that, but they did not back down. They

(38:11):
believed that bringing you know, all people together was important
and they did it. I think that's one thing we
see a little bit of though, right when a company
sticks to values, even sometimes in the face of losing profits,
losing you know, they come out on the other side
better for it. Yeah. Absolutely, So in the nine fifties,
kind of along that same line, Levi's actually removed segregation

(38:33):
of their workers long before the laws required it. In fact,
in the SI I think you found this story in
the nineteen sixties, Um, there was a story about a
segregated factory in Virginia. Right. So Levi's obviously, as the
spread of genes started to move much more easterly. They figured, hey,
we've got a lot of places on the west coast,
we need some factories and whatnot on the east coast
for you know, distribution senses. So they looked at a place,

(38:54):
a little town called Blackstone, Virginia. They've almost gotten to
like signing on the dotted line to open a fact actory.
And the people of the city said, oh, by the way,
it's going to be a segregated factory, right, and Levi
Strausson company went, uh, no, Long story short, they refused
to open the factory until the city finally caved and said, okay, fine,
you can have an unsegregated factory in our city. And

(39:16):
it was one of the first ones in the whole
country to be decent unsegregated in a segregated state. Yeah,
I mean, that's pretty amazing. And I have to say
they sort of continued that tradition on a lot of fronts.
So they were sort of racially um ahead of the
curve in terms of you know, integrating people. They were
um very early on sort of focused on the rights

(39:38):
of LGBTQ folks starting with and I don't I don't
know if I want to say starting with but in two,
just as the AIDS crisis was really becoming a thing,
they you know, they were doing donation matches on that front.
In two they were the first, the first Fortune five
company to extend health benefits to unmarried pastic partners. Um.

(40:01):
They were just and by the way, they still continue
that tradition. They're very involved in Pride now and and
they're very progressive in their beliefs that they've made some
anti Trump donations. Like, they're not shy about who they
are and who their values are as a company. And
it's interesting because I feel like people of all stripes
were Levies and all political stripes, I mean even and
they don't even I think they probably just don't realize

(40:22):
that the companies as progressive as it is. Right, That's
kind of seems to be the trend with Levi's right,
they're very solid about what they stand for. But they're
not gonna throw it out there. They're not going to
publicize it like crazy. They're just gonna do the right thing. Right,
They're not flashy about it. Uh, they just do it
on another front. Uh. They also I love this story.
They were the first multinational apparel company to launch a

(40:46):
code of conduct for all of their factories and licensees
worldwide that had ethical standards, legal and environmental requirements, required
certain amount of community involvement. They added standards to address
child and forced labor, disciplinary rules, working hours, wages. I mean,
they really said, look, this is how we operate. We

(41:07):
don't care what country it's in, which is like WHOA, yeah,
that is unfortunately the exception. Most companies go, hey, we're
gonna send it there and you just do how you
do in place. Right, We're gonna we we expect to
pay less for labor and we're just gonna like turn
a blind eye. Right. So they were, again I believe,
the first multinational apparel company to do that. So they

(41:30):
were always true to those kinds of company values, and
I do think that has made them who they are
and given them somewhat of the staying power that they've
had even through difficult times. So getting back to our timeline,
the nighties saw more competition for Levi's as designer genes
became a thing. They took some hits, for sure, but

(41:52):
I think we all know they survived because you probably
have a pair of Levi's in your closet right now,
or just got finishing a Levi's commercial on television. So
they survived. But how they do it, we'll talk about
it right after this. While Levi's were the staple of

(42:13):
the sixties and seventies, nineteen seventy nine was the first
year that the designer genes sales really took off. That year,
Gloria Vanderbilt sold six million pairs of jeans, only to
be eclipse the following year by Calvin Klein and his
racy TV ads starring a sexified fifteen year old Brook Shields. Yeah,

(42:36):
and they were like super sexy and super controversial, but
they sold. They worked, and Calvin Klein went on to
sell fifteen million pairs of jeans in nine eight one.
That ushers in the whole nineteen eighties era of you
know the material girl as Madonna called it, and it
made Levi's less of a popular choice, at least for women. Guys.

(43:00):
I think we're still buying Levi's pretty consistently, but you know,
of half the market goes away or slows way down,
that's problematic. Yeah, So the competition and ensuing financial difficulties
causes Levi's to actually close around sixty of its manufacturing
plants around the world during the eighties. Now, it's worth

(43:22):
noting that in one Levi Strouss and Company had gone public,
but family members, of course, we're still on board and
they were still keeping watch. And in the midst of
these tough times, the descendants of Levi Strausse, the family,
the nephews, the great nephews, the son in laws and
whoever's recaptured ownership of the company, taking it private again

(43:44):
and keeping it that way for the next thirty four years.
So they took it off the public market. But that
really didn't solve all the financial woes they had, did it? No?
I mean, you know what that does, I think, And
you know, you see companies often trying to make the
decision about whether or not to do that. One of
the things, of course it does, is it takes the
company out of not only the public market, but the

(44:06):
public eye. So they're no longer having to show all
of their numbers to everyone, um. And they also aren't
just working to that quarterly report trying to appease shareholders
so they can invest in a better way for long
term growth or regrowth in this case. So I think
that's A lot of the reason why that happened for

(44:26):
this company, and one of the way is that they
work their way back was it was actually something I
really believe in, which is knowing your customer. They very
much knew who their customer was. They realized that at
that moment in history, women, certainly women looking to be
highly fashionable, weren't turning to Levi's. They did try to

(44:48):
put some Levi's out that were in the mold of
the designer genes, with the acid washes and the tighter
fits and those kinds of things, but they also decided
to focus in on that core group that we're still
buying their clothes, men in particular weirdly working men. And
I say it with a shrug in my voice, because

(45:08):
they sort of went back to their roots and made
working pants for modern working men in the form of Dockers.
Oh okay, all right, that makes some sense though, right,
because when I think of Dockers as a guy, I
think of like mechanic pants, plumber pants or something like that. Well,
I think of like just like your average Now see,

(45:31):
things have already changed since you got into the workplace,
but things were just starting to get more casual than
like people were wearing suits to work and then all
of a sudden, like khakis and a button down sort
of became okay for men. And that's the Dockers that
I sort of picture like that, you know that that
like working guy, but now he's an office worker. So
they're not like you know, hardy pants with rivets. Now

(45:53):
they're sort of like, you know, a more comfortable casual
pair of work pants of dressy work pants, except less
less dressy. Right. Um. And so in fact, Doctors, as
we know is still a Brandon did very well and
it actually sort of helped usher in this whole era
that we're in now of dressing casual at work, kind

(46:16):
of like the casual Friday started by Doctors. Yeah, because
I think I mean, look, I think chinos or whatever
existed before that, but they were not as commonplace. And
you know, this was like now a popularized, readily available
um way to sort of still not be in your
casual clothes, but have this in between, this business casual

(46:37):
that we now talk about. So it was almost kind
of like the clothes that you wear at work and
then when you get home you leave them on because
they're so comfortable and you can wear them at work
at home either. One's fun all right, doctors, So doctors, Yeah,
helped really grow the company back, and they did some
other things as well, but that was one of the
things that helped them sort of come back from the
tough time in the eighties and grow through and into

(47:00):
the mid nineties. The trend towards dressing casual at work
was not only good for Docker sales, but if you
think about it, as we got more and more casual
at work, it also ended up being good for the
sale of Levi's denim also because you can wear your
jeans to work totally. And so Now a recent survey

(47:21):
says that more than fifty of the country where jeans
four or more days a week. Not surprising, honestly, as
much as you see blue jeans, right, come on, we
see blue jeans where we work every every day? Yea
of the people uh surveyed, I think this was just
a couple of years ago where jeans every single day. Wow,
hopefully not the same pair of jeans. Yeah, gross, gross, Uh,

(47:43):
for all intents and purposes that he basically brings us
up to modern time. Okay, now, but Danta, didn't you
mentioned earlier in the show that Levi's actually spent a
whole lot of time in court. I did, thank you
for keeping me on track, us I did. And here's
the deal. In a few circumstances they were defending themselves

(48:06):
in court, but a lot of the times they were
the ones instigating going to court, so in the defense
of themselves. There were a couple of examples in VY eight,
for example, the state of California filed an antitrust violation
lawsuit against them, and one a settlement of four million dollars.
And another one was so many years later, but this

(48:28):
one was more um personal, if you will, because five
of their own garment workers sued them, alleging that they
retaliated against those workers for filing costly job related injury claims.
And once again Levi Strouss lost that battle and had
to pay out ten points six million in that case.
So those were a couple of the times they were
in court defending themselves. And I feel like all big

(48:49):
companies end up in court in that way, not in
that way particularly, but in some way or other, because
that's just part and parcel for being a big company. Um.
But most of the time that Levi spent in court
was spent suing their competitors for infringing on their trademarks.
In fact, Levi Strouss leads the apparel industry in trademark

(49:10):
infringement cases, filing nearly a hundred lawsuits against its competitors
just since two thousand and one. Oh my gosh. Costs
say they have a very busy legal department. Most cases
a center on some form of an imitation of that
Levi's back pocket double arch stitching pattern. So I think

(49:31):
most of the companies are smart enough not to try
the red tab. Yeah, that's very iconically them, right, But
the double stitching or something close to it apparently has
been tried and tried and tried again by many of
the competitors who have been sued and sued and sued again.
For the record, Uh, Levi Stroussing Company has one many
of the cases they have filed, including cases against Guests

(49:54):
more than one. Also cases against Polo, Ralph, Lauren, Esprit,
and Lucky Brand Jeanes all sued and lost. Yeah. So,
um so, you know, kind of an interesting way to
spend your time when you're an iconic company. But I
guess you kind of have to do it. It is
kind of weird to think about them being in court
for something like the stitching all that often though, right,
because like all genes are kind of the same. I know,

(50:19):
I have to say it feels weird to me too,
because I feel like I would just look at the
tag and see if they were Levies, and I wouldn't
buy them if they weren't. You know, if I wanted Levis,
i'd buy Levies like I would look for them, right,
I wouldn't buy like guests thinking it was Levi's and
get confused, like I don't see that really happening. But
I think, um, that is just sort of unfortunately the
way our intellectual property laws are. And I am certainly

(50:40):
not an intellectual property lawyer, but my understanding is if
you don't legally defend your trademark, then you can sort
of lose the right. So you have to do it.
So they will literally put people out searching to make
sure nobody's even coming close. I know companies like McDonald's
do the same thing. If anybody even looks like they
have golden arches there in court absolute you've heard that
before the first time you let it slide, then they'll

(51:01):
use that you live it slide this time against you forever.
That's right. So that's actually just sort of part of
the way the law is. But there you go. They
spend a lot of time in court on those kinds
of things, So thank you for reminding me. Uh. In
any case, after weathering that downturn in the eighties, Levi's
was doing well, as we said, by the nineteen nineties,
where in and around the mid nineties they hit a

(51:22):
peak of seven billion in annual net sales. Yeah, pretty impressive.
And then you know, over the last three decades they've
had some more ups and downs, but they did see
a pretty significant comeback of late which led them to
return to the public market, and they actually debuted their
stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker

(51:42):
LEVI l e v I just in March of pretty
lucky they got that ticker that no one had tried
to snag that one from them. It is also right,
the stock is holding right about where it first came
onto the market at so it's not doing bad. And
they valued it over six and a half billion dollars
right now. Yeah, it's not bad. I mean they you know,

(52:03):
the stock had to like you know, it bounced up
like a lot of stocks do, and then sort of
kind of leveled off where it started, which is pretty
common I think in year one. In any case, that
plus their long history, gives me enough reason right there
to say that this iconic brand is here to stay.
But it's really the way we consumers see the brand
that matters in terms of iconic nous? Did I just

(52:25):
make it forward? I think you did. All right, we're
going to use it. Hey, we could have called this
podcast iconic instead of physiography too late. In any case,
we the consumers love Levi's. Levien had a net favorability
score of seventy two, which sounds kind of like a
C and not an A plus, but in truth it's

(52:46):
actually higher than its closest denim competitors. Wow. Wow, that's
really good. Now, don't you also think not only you know,
do we look at them so iconically is as a
good company, But don't you think it's also because Levi's
are totally woven into just pop culture in general is
why they're so iconic? Oh yeah, I mean Levi's have

(53:06):
been warned by everyone from James Dean to Marlon Brando
to Marilyn Monroe. Even Albert Einstein had a leather jacket
made by Levi's. Do you know Levis has a vintage
clothing department that remade that jacket that Albert Einstein wore
because they bought it from auction, the company did. They
used it to design the new jacket. They made five

(53:27):
hundred limited edition versions that not only were identical in
the way they looked, they also replicated the smell of
Albert Antine's jacket like Warren like they so apparently no,
apparently he liked he liked his tobacco, and he had,
you know, the manuscripts, the sitting in papers all day.
So they replicated the smell. And when you bought the jacket,
it came with a bottle of the smell Albert I

(53:50):
don't think it's what it's called. What they called, but
they didn't ask you. If they should have asked you,
that would have been great. Did you also know I've
got an interesting story I have to share real fast.
Being cross right, everyone knows Being Crosby Christmas music guy,
big popular singer back in the day in the fifties.
He went to Canada and he was going to walk
into a fancy Canadian hotel like restaurant, and he had

(54:11):
a pair of Levies and a Levi's denim jacket on
and they refused to let him in. So when that
news got back to Levi Strauss, they came up with
the Canadian tuxedo and it was literally a tuxedo made
completely out of denim. And the next time being Crosby
had a TV appearance, he wore it. Let's be fair,

(54:33):
look it up. It's hideous. That's really funny because I
always thought the term Canadian tuxedo was more of like,
you know, us making fun of the Canadians for not
knowing how to dress up. It was more us making
fun of them because they shunned our blue jeans. Unbelievable.
That's actually kind of a cool story. Who knew? So?

(54:54):
Between all of the um intersections with pop culture, the
consumer love of the brand, the core values of the company,
I just don't think Levi's is going anywhere. I give
Levi Strauss and Company two thumbs up on its chances
to continue on as a beloved and iconic brand. What

(55:14):
do you think? Absolutely there will be red tabs on
butts for decades to come. So that's four thumbs up
from the Phosiography team. That's our show, See you next time.
Phisiography is produced by the I Heart Podcast Network. I'm
your host Dana Barrett, My co host is Nick Bean,
our producer is Tory Harrison, and our executive producer is

(55:37):
Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I want to give us feedback
or have a company you'd like us to cover. Email
us at info at phisiography dot show, or contact us
on social. I'm at d Danta Barrett on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram, or just search for me on LinkedIn. Thanks
for your support, d