The Blues Are Born

The Blues Are Born
In March 1853, the youngest member of the firm of J. Strauss Brother & Co. of New York City stepped off a steamship and onto one of San Francisco’s many wharves.

He was one of the city’s newest entrepreneurs, the proprietor of the West Coast branch of the family business, but he gave this new enterprise his own name: Levi Straus.

Born in Bavaria in 1829, Levi immigrated to New York with his mother and sisters around 1847.

Brothers Louis and Jonas had a dry goods wholesaling business there and Levi joined the family firm. By the early 1850, the Gold Rush had turned San Francisco into a humming metropolis, and Levi was sent to California to represent J. Strauss Brother & Co. on the West Coast.

His first wholesale warehouse was on the north side of California Street between Sansome and Battery Streets.

On May 1853, the clipper ship Oriental arrived in the city form New York with his first shipment of dry goods and six more ships arrived with merchandise for Levi before the year ended. The firm of “Levi Strauss” soon had retail customers throughout the West.

He did not build his business alone. Around 1856, his sister Fanny her husband David Stern and their son Jacob arrived in San Francisco from New York, and brother Louis joined the firm a year later.

Levi moved his warehouse to a succession of larger quarters and by 1864, he was living with Fanny and David’s growing family.

In 1866, the company moved to spacious headquarters at 14-16 Battery Street, and the corporate name was now “Levi Strauss & Co.”

In January, the wife of a local laborer asked Jacob, a tailor to make a pair of sturdy pants for her husband. Using a heavy white fabric called cotton duck Jacob fashioned the trousers as usual.

He wanted to make the pants last longer, so he used a few metal rivets to fasten the pockets and presented the finished product to his customer, who paid him $3.

Within a few moths, Jacob was making so many pairs he decided to patent the process and look for a business partner to help him mass produce the pants.

Enter Levi Strauss, his fabric supplier, Jacob wrote to Levi sometime in 1872, and in July of that year the two men applied for a patent on the new invention.

Their correspondence was lost in 1906, so it is not known what kind of agreement they forged, but what is known is the important thing: on May 20, 1873, the US patent and Trademark Office granted Levi Strauss & Co. and Jacob Davis patent No. 139, 121 for an “Improvement in Fastening Pocket Opening” on men’s work pants: the first blue jeans.
The Blues Are Born