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 corporations, which mentioned in August that it could relocate its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston. Elon Musk has mentioned he’ll transfer his corporations SpaceX and X from California to Texas.
In contrast in scale, Dickies’ bounce from a metropolis often known as Cowtown to at least one as soon as nicknamed Goat Hill will have an effect on about 120 staff, mentioned 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 mentioned in a press release.
Placing the individuals who work at Dickies and Vans collectively can also be supposed to “create an much more vibrant campus the place creativity and greatest follow sharing can thrive by way of larger collaboration and connections,” she mentioned.
The transfer, maybe together with the relocation of staff to California, is predicted to be full by Could. Vans’ workplaces, 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 pattern, calling it as a substitute a call to optimize the usage of property VF owns in Costa Mesa as a substitute of conserving Dickies’ rented headquarters in Fort Price.
“Persons are ascribing different issues to it,” Miserandino mentioned, when actual property possession “may be 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,” mentioned Miserandino, chief govt of trade commerce publication RetailWire.
Denver-based VF has confronted monetary headwinds in recent times 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 advised traders 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 development for Vans,” VF President Bracken P. Darrell mentioned on the decision. He didn’t supply particulars however did acknowledge errors that occurred after a growth interval from 2015 to 2020, when the model turned widespread with cultural tastemakers and celebrities, resulting in gross sales amongst a bigger buyer base.
“We truly took our eye off … the core youth viewers that had been the lifeblood of Vans,” Darrell mentioned. “The model needed to evolve, however fairly 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 and marketing to the core youth, and as a substitute centered on everybody else.”
Information of Dickies’ transfer shook some folks 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 among the metropolis’s premier leisure venues for live shows, group 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.
