Delta Apparel History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Delta Apparel, Inc. is filed in its original Apparel Search profile in the company's own formal summary, kept here as the page's frame: along with its wholly-owned subsidiaries M. J. Soffe, LLC, Junkfood Clothing Company and To The Game, LLC, it is an international design, manufacturing, sourcing and marketing company with a diverse portfolio of high quality branded and private label activewear apparel and headwear. It specialises in casual and athletic products sold through almost every distribution channel for these types of apparel - specialty and boutique shops, upscale and traditional department stores, mid-tier retailers, sporting goods stores, screen printers and private label accounts, plus college bookstores and the US military, and direct to consumers through its websites.

Activewear and Retail-Ready: The Two Segments

The Activewear segment comprises business units focused on garment styles characterised by low fashion risk: unembellished knit apparel marketed under the Delta Pro Weight, Delta Magnum Weight and Quail Hollow brands, sold primarily to screen printing companies, plus private label manufacturing for retailers, branded sportswear companies, corporate programs and sports licensed apparel marketers. The Pro Weight line is a diverse selection of mid-weight 100 percent cotton silhouettes - short and long sleeve tees in youth and adult sizes and many colours, with pocket tees and ringer tees as specialties. The Magnum Weight line uses a heavier-weight 100 percent cotton fabric, from size 2-Toddler to adult 5X, including the popular Tall Tee to 5XLT. Quail Hollow offers polo shirts and ladies and junior tees, including plus sizes and a slim fitting tee for adults.

The Retail-Ready segment consists of units focused on more specialised garments and headwear meeting consumer preferences and fashion trends, sold through specialty, department and sporting goods stores, college bookstores and the US military. Its brands as recorded are Soffe, Intensity Athletics, Junk Food, Junk Mail and Sweet and Sour, plus the Game and Kudzu headwear from March 29, 2009. The original notes the loyalties inside the segment: Soffe shorts enjoy a very loyal following among teenage and adolescent girls, many involved in cheerleading and dance teams; Intensity Athletics, added in fiscal 2006, covers sports team uniforms; Junkfood Clothing, also added in fiscal 2006, makes vintage licensed apparel for juniors, men, boys and children. Performance fabric work includes Dri-release, a microblend engineered for cotton-like comfort with quick-dry wicking, and the Soffe line's WicAway quick-drying fabrics.

Acquisitions, Manufacturing and Scale as Filed

The dated developments run in order. On October 2, 2006 Delta completed the acquisition of Fun-Tees, Inc., founded in 1972, a maker of private label custom knit t-shirts for branded sportswear companies, whose custom manufacture in varied styles, fabrics and colours - and ability to decorate, package and direct-ship retail-ready product from offshore facilities - joined the Activewear segment. In fiscal 2008 production began at Ceiba Textiles, a state-of-the-art offshore textile facility in the Green Valley Industrial Park near San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which knits, dyes, finishes and cuts fabric primarily for activewear: it reached 500,000 pounds of production per week in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 and 700,000 pounds per week, its then capacity, in the second quarter of fiscal 2009, expandable to one million pounds per week with a further 2 to 3 million dollars of capital expenditure. On March 29, 2009 To The Game, LLC purchased substantially all the assets of Gekko Brands, LLC - The Game, founded in 1986 as a premier headwear supplier to colleges and universities, and Kudzu, formed in 1993 for NASCAR team headwear and jackets - financed through the company's credit facility, whose accordion exercise brought the total line to 110 million dollars.

Manufacturing and scale close the filing. The company knits, dyes and finishes fabric at its plant in Maiden, North Carolina and at Ceiba Textiles in Honduras; garments are sewn primarily at company plants in Fayetteville and Rowland, North Carolina and leased facilities in La Paz, El Salvador, Campeche, Mexico and San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with outside contractors mainly in the Caribbean basin. It offers same-day shipping in activewear and sells by the piece, by the dozen or in full cases, servicing over 18,000 customers with no single customer over 10 percent of sales in any year. As of 2009 it employed approximately 6,500 full time employees across the United States, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, and had obtained WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production) certification for all its existing sewing plants in Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico - a certification claim readers should verify with the certifying authority for any current sourcing decision. The preserved routes lead to Delta Apparel financials and jobs, to the corporate apparel and blank t-shirt wholesale guides, and to Anvil Knitwear in the A letter, the comparable blank-apparel maker the original points to.

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