Tomáš's son Thomas J. Bata rebuilt and expanded shoe manufacturing in the company name after moving to Canada in 1939, at the time of the Nazi invasion and annexation of Czechoslovakia.

Tomáš Baťa established the organization in Zlín on 24 August 1894 with 800 Austrian gulden (equivalent to $320 at the time), inherited from his mother.

His brother Antonín Baťa and sister Anna were partners in the startup firm T. & A. Bata Shoe Company.

[1] In 1904, Baťa travelled to Lynn, a city outside Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States that was then the center of world footwear production.

During the interwar period, Baťa again visited the United States, to observe progress at the River Rouge Plant of Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

[3] Baťa recognized the needs of his customers, whose purchasing power had been significantly reduced in the aftermath of the war, and enlarged his offerings to produce low-cost shoes for the general public.

These factories were allowed to be self-sufficient and autonomous in their design, production and distribution strategies, in order to be able to cater to their local population.

[3][5] Bata is credited with efforts to modernize his hometown, both through employment and construction of housing facilities, making him a very popular citizen.

On the other hand, we can find poor tradesmen and entrepreneurs and an impoverished population in countries with a low standard of business morality.

The record shows that Tomáš Baťa did indeed precede modern "quality management" practices by at least half a century.

Baťa died in a plane crash (Junkers J13 D1608) in 1932 near the Zlín airport while trying to fly to Möhlin in Switzerland on a business trip under bad weather conditions of dense local fog.

He founded the famous Zlin aircraft works two years after Baťa's death, starting with simple gliders.

From the 1930s to the eve of the World War II, he developed for sale several sophisticated types (e.g. the Walter Mikron avgas-powered Zlín Z-XII, which was widely exported, and the Z-XIII, as well as some successful sailplanes) and aero engines.

Anticipating the Second World War, Baťa's son Thomas J. Bata, along with over 100 families from Czechoslovakia, moved to Canada in 1939.

It became the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of footwear selling over 300 million pairs of shoes each year and employing over 80,000 people.