About Us

The Bata Heritage Archive is a joint project of Tomas Bata University, the Bata Company and the Thomas Bata Foundation. It has been developed to make available a variety of documents, newspapers and photos, which can help provide a better understanding of the history and tradition of this enterprise. The history of the Bata Company began 125 years ago, and since that time millions of people have been influenced and affected by the company’s activities. During that period the Bata Company has operated in more than 100 countries worldwide, establishing factories, retail networks, sister companies and two dozen company towns with specific functionalist architecture. Our goal is to enable scholars, employees and former employees, as well as others interested in the Bata history and tradition, to research thousands of archival items collected by employees of the Tomas Bata University and the Bata Company, in order to find out more about the fascinating history of this enterprise. 


The home page contains just a fraction of the available documents. Access to the main collections is available only upon login with a user name and password, which is assigned by the administrators of the Bata Heritage Archive. All images and documents are the property of their respective owners. If you intend to reproduce or share any of the images or documents in this archive for any purpose, please ensure that you are in compliance with the Terms of Use for each image or document.