A longtime manufacturer of workwear and other apparel is relocating its headquarters from Texas to California — reversing a highly publicized trend of companies moving in the opposite direction in recent years.
The parent company of Dickies and a series of other footwear and clothing brands announced a plan to consolidate its footprint in Southern California, which would see the brand — established in Fort Worth more than 100 years ago — head 1,400 miles west to Orange County, where it will join with the operations of sister company and famed California shoe brand Vans at a campus in Costa Mesa early next year.
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VF Corp., which also owns Timberland, The North Face and JanSport, told the Los Angeles Times that bringing Dickies and Vans together would help optimize the company’s real estate portfolio and allow the teams from two iconic, if very different brands to collaborate and share best practices.
The move will reportedly affect about 120 jobs — paling in comparison to the leading industrial and high-tech companies that have announced their departures from California for the Lone Star State in recent years, including Oracle, Chevron, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and, perhaps most famously, Elon Musk-helmed companies Tesla, SpaceX and X.
But California officials nonetheless took the opportunity to highlight the Golden State’s business bona fides. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office noted that California continues to host more companies on the Fortune 500 list than any other state, in addition to leading the nation in manufacturing, new business starts, and access to venture capital funding.
Dickies, meanwhile, will continue to operate a distribution hub in Fort Worth, as well as a warehouse and its nearby storefronts.
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