Uwarunkowania działalności firmy „Bata” w Polsce w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym

Abstract

The article characterizes the conditions in which the well-know shoe company from Czechoslovakia – later on a world potentate in this trade – the “Bata” concern had to function. The first part of the article discusses the attempts of penetrating the market in the southern Poland that were undertaken during the World War I, and later on in the early 1920s. The attempts failed due to administrative limitations imposed on the trading of leather and shoes as well as due to currency perturbations. The second part of the article presents the functioning of the company and its development starting from opening Polish Shoe Partnership “Bata” S.A. in Cracow and building a factory in Chełmek in1932. It focuses on depicting the atmosphere in which the company from Czechoslovakia functioned on the Polish market. The article discusses the reactions of the shoe industry to the functioning of “Bata” and persecutions from the Polish authorities that initially treated the company with visible distrust. It also presents the process of changing the view of the company resulting from the German threat and the agreement for its further expansion achieved by building a new shoe and leather factory near Puławy as part of the Central Industrial Region. A separate issue that is discussed in the article are the protective methods that were used by the Polish daughter company against attacks and development limitations that were imposed by the authorities – methods that frequently treaded on a fine line between legal and illegal, or even crossed the line.