Novelty, sports apparel firms push growth
- Several Rochester-area apparel businesses sport new products with an eye on increasing revenues.
It might be time to leave the black tie and high heels in the closet.
Local apparel manufacturers would rather see you workout or play in their apparel, and maybe laugh about it too.
"The number of people that are doing what we are doing has increased dramatically," said Vic Ciaccia, who owns AVS Activewear with his brother Tony since 1979. "Whether it's out of their garage, in their basement, or if they set up storefronts or warehouses ... it's very competitive."
It's lucrative too. The average annual expense by household on apparel, footwear and related products in 2010 was $1,700, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retail clothing store sales last year totaled more than $182 billion or nearly double what it was 20 years ago, according to market research firm Statista.
There has been much ebb and flow in the local print screening and sports apparel market over the years. When AVS started there were only a couple companies that provided services to retailers, Ciaccia said. Champion Products Inc., founded in Rochester, was a local apparel powerhouse.
Bowling halls, local retailers, teams and schools turned to these companies for numbered jerseys and other gear. Each season brought a new team and more orders.
Then bigger manufacturers like Nike and Reebok started connecting with regional manufacturers to quickly turn around inventory, Ciaccia said. The growth of the Internet also brought out new companies that could buy the equipment to make the shirts and start selling to anyone, anywhere.
Champion made uniforms for 2,200 colleges, 19,000 high schools and seven National Football League teams, including the Buffalo Bills, before it was sold to Sara Lee Corp. for $321 million in 1989. Its headquarters were moved from Pittsford to North Carolina.
Mass layoffs began to hit the industry in the late 1990s. Then the recession hit. Retailers that once turned to AVS were suddenly going out of business. The bowling shirt orders for AVS dwindled.
"All of that business is gone," Ciaccia said. "There aren't that many sporting goods store left anymore."
Novelty shirts
But where business has dried up, it has seemingly sprung up in other segments.
Bill Kingston, owner of Crazy Dog T-shirts based in Rochester, recently moved out of a warehouse at the Village Gate to a bigger facility on Humboldt Street. The facility is almost 30,000 square feet, allowing the company and its nearly 30 employees to push out as many as 5,000 custom T-shirts during its peak times, the few weeks leading up to Christmas and St. Patrick's Day.
Crazy Dog's shirts are marked up with catchy phrases and pop culture references to draw in the 18- to 35-year-old crowd. One shirt reads, "KEEP CALM AND KILL ZOMBIES," and another reads "KEEP CALM AND DRINK WINE." The company has launched StPatricksDayShirts.com and MaternityShirt.com, and has started to look at softer and more comfortable fabrics as a way to grow revenues.
"Three to four years ago, everyone wanted a cheap T-shirt," Kingston said. "They wanted to pay under $10 for T-shirt and that was that. But now we are noticing that people want to spend money on nicer shirts."
Passantino's on Titus Avenue in Irondequoit was one of those local apparel companies that got its start out of the basement, more specifically the home of Ron Passantino. He is a former sales manager at Eastman Kodak Co. who helped run distribution for the company's document imaging business. He retired about a year ago.
"What I am doing now is part of a 20-year plan," he said. "Now is the time to grow because I have the time and I'm doing the business 100 percent of the day."
Besides selling athletic gear, the company is branching into other areas: novelty T-shirts and high-volume scanners. Scanners because of Passantino's background and T-shirts to attract a younger demographic to the shop.
"We want that part of the business to donate some money to charity," he said of the T-shirts. "Do it all on the website in a three-drop down box. It'll be a really easy thing, pick your size, pick your shirt and pick your charity."
He hopes to have the service launched on Passantinos.com in the next few weeks.
"We are kind of going through the same thing Kodak went through," Passantino said. "As film declined they had to find other revenue streams and that's kind of what we are doing. We are still growing and we are adding stuff to the company."
Athletic apparel
Joel Barrett, a 36-year-old senior auditor, decided to work with fashion designer Annika Tibando and business partner Mike Bysiek to launch a line of workout apparel called Aroque.
The small team worked to identify a broad team of specialty contractors in the country to manufacture the apparel.
"There are a lot of challenges," said Barrett. "It's like a puzzle where your pieces are scattered all over the place. It really takes a large, large network of people doing small tasks. To be able to be small and still price competitive — that is the most challenging thing."
A portion of each sale goes to a charity selected by one of its models, former professional basketball player Ryan Pettinella and fitness model Allie Carey. The business has an online store.
"The Internet has leveled the playing field on promotion, but has increased it with competition," Barrett explained.
Meanwhile, AVS is still printing, embroidering and selling related gear. It was once a test site for a special Xerox Corp. printing project that was later bagged when the copier giant ran into stock and profit issues.
About 12 years ago, AVS moved to a 15,000-square-foot building on Tremont Street in the city from its former site on Fernwood Park, near the Bausch + Lomb Inc. plant on North Goodman Street. The company has employed as few as 10 during the lean years and as many as 43 through the busy times. Today it has about 30 workers on the payroll.
Ciaccia said orders from area schools and others keep business growing, along with its ability to place numbers on athletic apparel. The Aquinas Institute and Nazareth College are among some of its local clients. The numbering system is a time consuming process, he explained.
"Nobody really likes doing that," he said. "I think that is one of the reasons that we've survived."
TCLAUSEN@DemocratandChronicle.com