Levis may well have been the pants that won the West, but it wasn’t the pants themselves that put Levi Strauss & Company on the map, it was the rivets that held them together under the strain of hard labor. And the rivets weren’t Strauss’ invention – that came from Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada, who had a great idea but not $69 for a patent. So he partnered with Strauss, and the rest is history.
Listen to this episode of This Week in Business History with Kelly Barner to trace blue jean innovations as they cross paths with the gold rush, the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, World War I, and the Gilded Age.
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