Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss (
February 26,
1829â€"
September 26,
1902) was a German-born
American clothing manufacturer.
Born as
Löb Strauss into a
Jewish family in
Buttenheim in
Franconia,
Bavaria, now a part of
Germany. 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 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.
It was on
California Street that Levi and his brother-in-law
David Stern opened a dry goods
wholesale business called
Levi Strauss & Co. Levi 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.
In
1872, Levi received a letter from
Jacob Davis, a
Reno,
Nevada tailor. 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 strainâ€"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 Jacob 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.
Levi Strauss died on
September 26,
1902, at the age of 73. He left his thriving manufacturing and dry goods business to his four nephewsâ€"
Jacob,
Louis,
Abraham and
Sigmund Sternâ€"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.
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Levi Strauss Company*
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