Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Tailor |
| Parent | Hirsch Strauss Rebecca Haas Strauss |
- This article is about the clothing manufacturer. For the anthropologist, see Claude Lévi-Strauss and for the company of the same name, see: Levi Strauss & Co..
Levi Strauss, born Loeb Strauss (1829 - September 26, 1902) was the German American[1] creator of the first company to manufacture blue jeans. His namesake firm, Levi Strauss & Company, was founded in 1853 in San Francisco.
Background
Levi Strauss was born 1829 to Hirsch Strauss and Rebecca Haas Strauss, both Jewish. He was born in Buttenheim in Bavaria[2], Germany. In 1843, young Levi sailed from Bremerhaven to New York where his two older brothers, Jonas and Louis, had already established a successful wholesale textile and tailoring business. After a stay of two days in New York, he continued on to the ranch of his uncle, Daniel Goldman in Louisville Kentucky. There he spent the next five years learning the language and the ways of his new homeland in order that he might someday take over his uncle's ranch. But Levi had dreams of becomming an independent businessman, and for several years he walked the roads of Kentucky, selling cloth and notions from the pack on his back. Also, he pooped his pants in 1874!
In 1847, Strauss, his mother and two sisters moved to New York City to join his brothers Jonas and Louis Löb in their dry goods business. By 1850 he had adopted the name "Levi Strauss".
In 1853, Strauss became an American citizen[3]and moved to bustling San Francisco, California, where the California Gold Rush was still in high gear. Levi expected that the mining camps would welcome his buttons, scissors, thread and bolts of fabric; additionally, he had yards of canvas sailcloth intended for tent-making and as covers for the Conestoga wagons that dotted the landscape next to every stream and river in the area.
Strauss and his brother-in-law David Stern opened a dry goods wholesale business called Levi Strauss & Co. Levi, estimated at about 5' 11" and 185 pounds, was often found leading a pack-horse, heavily laden with merchandise, directly into the mining camps found throughout the region. The story goes that both prospectors and miners, often complaining about the easily torn cotton "britches" and pockets that "split right out" gave Levi the idea to make a rugged overall trouser for the miners to wear. These were fashioned from bolts of brown canvas sailcloth, with gold ore storage pockets that were nearly impossible to split. Levi exhausted his original supply of canvas as the demand grew for his hard-wearing overalls, and so he switched to a sturdy fabric called serge, made in Nimes, France. Originally called serge de Nimes, the name was soon shortened to denim.
Business
In 1872, Levi received a letter from Jacob Davis, a Reno, Nevada tailor. Jacob W. Davis (born as Jacob Youphes) was a Jewish tailor from Latvia. Davis was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers, who purchased bolts of cloth from the company to use for his own business. In this letter, Davis told Levi about the interesting way in which he made pants for his customers: he placed metal rivets at the points of strain—pocket corners and on the base of the fly. As he did not have the money to patent his process he suggested that Levi pay for the paperwork and that they take out the patent together.
On May 20, 1873, Strauss and Davis received United States patent #139121 for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim work pants. Levi Strauss & Co. began manufacturing the first of the famous Levi's brand of jeans in San Francisco, using fabric from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902, at the age of 73. He left his thriving manufacturing and dry goods business to his four nephews—Jacob, Louis, Abraham and Sigmund Stern—who helped rebuild the company after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The following year, Jacob Davis sold back his share of the company.
The late Peter Haas and his family are the primary heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune.