Levi Jeans

Levi's Jeans

Levi Strauss & Co. is a privately held clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the company began producing denim overalls in the 1870s, modern jeans were not produced until the 1920s. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with employee ownership and a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss' four nephews.

One of Levi's customers was Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Jacob's costumers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. Jacobs did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi suggesting that they both go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacobs' offer, on May 20, 1874, the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The "patented rivet" would later be incorporated into the company's jean design (and into later advertising lore). Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), manufacture of denim overalls only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s.

from Wikipedia