Levi Strauss & Co.

Fashion Design  Apparel Definition

A Dry Goods Business That Became a Jeans Company

Levi Strauss & Co. began in 1853 as a west coast branch of a New York dry goods business, opened in San Francisco by Levi Strauss. The jeans that made the company famous came through one of its wholesale customers. Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from the company's wholesale house, had the idea of using copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain on pants — the pocket corners and the base of the button fly — after a customer kept buying cloth to reinforce torn pants. Davis did not have the money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi Strauss suggesting they go into business together. Levi accepted, and on May 20, 1874 the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The blue jean was born from a wholesale cloth relationship, not from a design studio.

Three Divisions, One Product Identity

The modern company is a worldwide corporation organised into three geographic divisions: Levi Strauss North Americas, based at the San Francisco headquarters, Levi Strauss Europe, based in Brussels, and the Asia Pacific Division, based in Singapore. Approximately 8,850 people are employed worldwide. The structure mirrors the product's history: a San Francisco company whose single best-known garment, the denim jean, is sold on three continents. Even the company logo works from the product — the image of a pair of horses trying to pull apart a pair of Levi's jeans is a play on Otto von Guericke's experiment demonstrating the power of atmospheric pressure, in which teams of horses tried to pull apart the joined Magdeburg hemispheres. Strength, demonstrated by pulling, is the claim in both cases.

When a Denim Company Tried Tailoring

In the early 1980s Levi Strauss tried entering the high-end suit market, targeting men who would normally buy very expensive tailor-made suits, with suit pieces available in different matchable sizes at mass retailers. The project never really caught on: the men it targeted were more interested in tailor-made suits and considered Levi's a denim-only company. The episode is a clear statement of what the brand means to its customers. A name built on riveted work pants and blue jeans carries authority in denim that does not transfer automatically to tailored clothing, however logical the extension looks on paper — and the definition keeps Levi Strauss & Co. identified, first and last, with the Levi's brand of denim jeans.