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 could relocate its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston. Elon Musk has stated he’ll transfer his firms SpaceX and X from California to Texas.
In contrast in scale, Dickies’ leap 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 acknowledged enterprise turnaround technique,” McCormack stated in an announcement.
Placing the individuals who work at Dickies and Vans collectively can also be meant to “create an much more vibrant campus the place creativity and finest follow sharing can thrive by higher collaboration and connections,” she stated.
The transfer, maybe together with the relocation of workers to California, is predicted to be full by Could. Vans’ workplaces, that are ringed on the prime with Vans’ well-known checkers, are at 1588 S. Coast Drive in Costa Mesa close to the 405 Freeway.
Retail business observer Dominick Miserandino didn’t see the Dickies transfer as half of a bigger pattern, calling it as a substitute a call to optimize the usage of property VF owns in Costa Mesa as a substitute of holding 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 call like this for operational effectivity,” stated Miserandino, chief govt of business commerce publication RetailWire.
Denver-based VF has confronted monetary headwinds lately with the corporate’s web income declining yearly since its 2022 fiscal 12 months.
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 informed 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.
“We’ve got a map again to progress for Vans,” VF President Bracken P. Darrell stated on the decision. He didn’t provide particulars however did acknowledge errors that occurred after a growth 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 … the core youth viewers that had been the lifeblood of Vans,” Darrell stated. “The model needed to evolve, however somewhat than proceed to respect and serve the youth viewers that had constructed the model, we solely fed the pattern 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 Area is without doubt one of the metropolis’s premier leisure venues for live shows, 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.
