Founded as a dry-goods company in San Francisco, CA (1853) by the German Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss, this company was transformed by a new process in 1873 that used metal rivets at stress points in denim work clothes. In the twentieth century these blue jeans escaped rough work—and playgrounds—to become uniforms for a casual lifestyle. Although baby boomers associated jeans with rebellions against established codes of dress, by the end of the century a vast variety of denims—in which Levi Strauss is only one competing brand—have become ubiquitous among all ages, classes and settings of the US as well as abroad. Levi Strauss, meanwhile, remains one of the largest privately held family corporations in the United States—a brief fling at public trading in 1971 ended with a 1985 buy back. Its worldwide sales stood at $6 billion in 1998 (slipping markedly from the year before), produced in thirty-two factories worldwide, with eleven in North America slated to close in 1999. Indeed, Levis, although a symbol of America, are more likely to be made worldwide in the region where they are purchased.