Dickies, one of many best-known workwear manufacturers within the nation, will transfer its headquarters from Fort Price to Costa Mesa to be with streetwear icon Vans, its sister model.
The transfer represents an actual property consolidation by VF Corp., which owns Dickies and Vans in addition to outdoorsy manufacturers the North Face, Timberland and JanSport.
The choice marks a uncommon reversal of a string of enterprise headquarters strikes from California to Texas. Excessive-profile departures embrace Chevron, one of many world’s largest oil firms, which stated in August that it will relocate its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston. Elon Musk has stated he’ll transfer his firms SpaceX and X from California to Texas.
Against this in scale, Dickies’ soar from a metropolis referred to as Cowtown to at least one as soon as nicknamed Goat Hill will have an effect on about 120 workers, stated Ashley McCormack, director of exterior communications at VF.
“This transfer permits VF to additional consolidate its U.S. actual property portfolio as a part of its said enterprise turnaround technique,” McCormack stated in a press release.
Placing the individuals who work at Dickies and Vans collectively can be meant to “create an much more vibrant campus the place creativity and finest observe sharing can thrive by means of larger collaboration and connections,” she stated.
The transfer, maybe together with the relocation of workers to California, is predicted to be full by Might. Vans’ places of work, that are ringed on the high with Vans’ well-known checkers, are at 1588 S. Coast Drive in Costa Mesa close to the 405 Freeway.
Retail trade observer Dominick Miserandino didn’t see the Dickies transfer as half of a bigger development, calling it as a substitute a choice to optimize the usage of property VF owns in Costa Mesa as a substitute of maintaining Dickies’ rented headquarters in Fort Price.
“Persons are ascribing different issues to it,” Miserandino stated, when actual property possession “is perhaps the larger issue than the angle of how unusual it’s” to see an organization going from Texas to California.
“Clearly you’re making a choice like this for operational effectivity,” stated Miserandino, chief government of trade commerce publication RetailWire.
Denver-based VF has confronted monetary headwinds lately with the corporate’s internet income declining yearly since its 2022 fiscal yr.
The corporate has a revitalization technique centered on its Vans model, whose income was down 11% within the firm’s second fiscal quarter that ended Sept. 28, a marked enchancment from the prior quarter when the model was down 22%, executives advised buyers throughout an earnings name final month, actual property knowledge supplier CoStar reported. The Dickies model was additionally down 11% within the firm’s second fiscal quarter, in contrast with a 14% income decline within the prior quarter.
“Now we have a map again to development for Vans,” VF President Bracken P. Darrell stated on the decision. He didn’t supply particulars however did acknowledge errors that occurred after a increase interval from 2015 to 2020, when the model turned well-liked with cultural tastemakers and celebrities, resulting in gross sales amongst a bigger buyer base.
“We really took our eye off to the core youth viewers that had been the lifeblood of Vans,” Darrell stated. “The model needed to evolve, however reasonably than proceed to respect and serve the youth viewers that had constructed the model, we solely fed the development that grew it quickly. We largely withdrew advertising to the core youth, and as a substitute targeted on everybody else.”
Information of Dickies’ transfer shook some individuals in Fort Price, the place the corporate was co-founded in 1922 by E.E. “Colonel” Dickie and has a excessive profile as an area enterprise. Dickies Enviornment is without doubt one of the metropolis’s premier leisure venues for concert events, neighborhood occasions and the annual Forth Price Inventory Present & Rodeo.
“The announcement final week that Dickies is leaving its residence base in Fort Price for a brand new headquarters in California shocked metropolis leaders and left the model’s most loyal followers in Texas dumbfounded,” the Fort Price Star-Telegram reported.
