Karel Vytopil
I was born on September 10, 1910 in Brno. As a young boy, at the age of eight or nine, my favorite subjects were Geography and History. A constant dream of mine was to sail the seven seas and visit countries far away from Europe. I especially enjoyed taking the world atlas just to travel, only on paper, of course, I would try to imagine I was in another country.
My high school studies focused on commerce, and again, my main objective was to see the world. In 1927, some six weeks before graduation, I was approached and asked if I would like to join the Bata shoe company. It was just starting to grow in Czechoslovakia, their shoe line was the most popular in the country, the most impressive thing everyone noticed at that time was the fact all the employees were very efficiently trained salespeople. So I joined the company. After being in the store for some six weeks only, they asked me to go to Zlin, the company´s headquarters which employed over 10,000 people and daily produced 30,000 pairs of shoes. When I arrived to Zlin it was something I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. It was not only a very efficiently managed factory and office but contained its own town for the employees. My first assignment in Zlin was in the sales department and in a few months I became responsible for thirty-five stores. At the same time, even though I was only eighteen years old, part of my job was to teach younger boys, fourteen to sixteen years old, various subjects in commerce and economics. I remember there were the hardest-working people I have even known. It was normal for us to work from 7 am till late evenings, however, the salary was excellent, more than half of the income was a share in the profit and loss, end everybody was trying his best to excel in his job, to get a chance for promotion, whether it would be in the factory or one of the sales or export departments. We worked hard but also enjoyed our weekends and our vacations. The first year I had the opportunity to go to Hamburg and saw the sea for the very first time.
When Mr. Bata returned from the trip, he began selecting additional employees to develop and organize things in South-eastern Asia
In December 1931, Mr. Bata left for a business trip with his export department managers to visit North Africa, the Middle East, India, Singapore and Indonesia. The goal of this trip was to establish the planning and development of an export and domestic business to these countries. He saw great possibilities as well as the serious economic difficulties around the world. An immediate action was required. A group of young men left for India to organize the first factory in the East and to establish a retail organization there. When Mr. Bata returned from the trip, he began selecting additional employees to develop and organize things in South-eastern Asia. At the age of twenty-one, I was one of the first to be selected to go to what used to be Dutch East Indies. My dream was fulfilled. Not long after that, I was on board an ocean liner.
I spent only about two years in Indonesia. Then, at the age of twenty-three, I was appointed company manager of Singapore and Malayan company. At the beginning there were only eight stores but after just six years we had a hundred seventy-five stores and agencies, plus a canvas shoe factory. In 1937, the company purchased a five-story building in the center of Singapore, where we built the most modern store, which had full customer services like repairs of ladies stockings, a chiropody outlet for professional foot care etc. When I had to make the Bata sign for our shoe stores in Chinese alphabet characters, I found out the proper translation of the word Bata was „strong man“. Me, my wife Julie and our three kids remember the time spent in Singapore as the most wonderful time in our lives. We played lot of tennis, we swam in the sea, we had an excellent Bata men soccer team called „Moravia“. Since I was not only the company manager but also the goalie wherever I went everybody knew me.
In 1941, I was sent back to Indonesia. When the war started, the Americans, British and many other foreigners were advised by their embassies to leave as it was expected that Indonesia would be soon invaded by the Japanese. However, all Bata people stayed. In just a short time, the Japanese came. Our cars and furniture were taken from us. We were moved to a nearby camp and remained under constant control. During the next three and half years of the occupation, we had to use whatever we had in our homes and savings, to be exchanged for food from the Malayan people. After the war ended in August 1945, for many months our group of Bata men drove daily to the factory just to protect the plant from looting. Javanese guerillas started fighting the occupation forces and one day I became the most thankful for being a Bata man. On my way to see what happened to one of our retail stores a guerilla group suddenly caught me with the intention to kill me. When they wanted to drag me away one of the Chinese storekeepers nearby started to shout on them: „He is not Dutch, he is from Bata!“ That meant I was considered to be something different and should be treated more as a friend. The name Bata and the respect it had earned actually saved my life. You should have seen the changed expressions on the faces of my captors. They even apologized.
My biggest thrill was when I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Mahatma Ghandi
My next assignment was in 1947. We went to India where I was appointed the manager of a factory in the state of Bihar. I remember, during one of the first visits of Mr. And Mrs. Bata the governor of the state insisted on meeting them, and he arranged audience for thirty minutes, that eventually took nearly two hours. When we look back on those days, I don´t think any board chairman or director of a company met so many presidents, governors, prime ministers, high government officials and leading businessman as our Mr. Bata. My biggest thrill was when I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Mahatma Ghandi, the spiritual leader of all the people of India. We were able to be a part of the historic events of these emerging nations with incidents I will never forget.
In 1954, I had the fine opportunity of officiating in Pakistan for Gus Dolezal who was at that time the company manager. He built the Bata plant from scratch to employ over 3,000 people. In 1955, I was transferred to Rhodesia. Bata business there was very well organized. Our store in the capital city of Salisbury was the most luxurious store in Africa which was selling a weekly average of 1,400 pairs of shoes, already in the second year of its existence. It wasn´t my last assignment though. In 1962, we came to Batawa in Canada, three years later to Salem in Indiana, and we have been living in Belcamp in Maryland since 1971.
To conclude, our life and times with the worldwide Bata organization have been both varied and the most interesting. There was always a time we had challenges to achieve the impossible. There was a time we were blessed with princely conditions. There was a time of darkness and great dangers in war but for those of us who have dedicated our working lives to this Bata there always was a time for the joys and satisfaction of great achievements.
Karel Vytopil, who was also a long-time Rotarian, retired in 1975, moved to Australia and passed away fifteen years later in the age of 79. His memoirs come from the Bata shoe company collection at the University of Toronto archives.
