California Apparel News

The North American licensed sportswear business is estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar market, and Philadelphia-headquartered brand Mitchell & Ness is making a gambit for a bigger chunk of it. It is scheduled to open its first West Coast office and a distribution center by mid-March in Irvine, Calif.

Mitchell & Ness holds licenses with sports leagues such as theNational Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and Major League Soccer, making caps, jerseys, shorts and other apparel bearing the logos of popular sports teams.

The brand will move into an Irvine business park a short drive from the headquarters of the Billabong label and the corporate headquarters of retailer Tilly’s Inc. When the new Mitchell & Ness office opens, 20 people are scheduled to work there in divisions such as headwear development, marketing, human relations and information technology. The brand’s head of Latin America business also will work out of the Irvine office, said Kevin Wulff, the brand’s chief executive officer.

“This facility will house all of our product under one roof and modernize our operations with the goal of providing gold-standard customer service. The organization will also feature an official showroom where select personnel will be chosen to support the brand’s overall business goals,” he said.

Mitchell & Ness, a privately held company, has frequently exhibited at the Agenda trade show and is retailed at sports venues such as Dodger Stadium and high-end boutiques such as Kith and Flight Club as well as in the brand’s e-commerce shop (www.mitchellandness.com).

The brand’s roots go back more than a century, when it started as a golf and tennis apparel maker in 1904. By the 1930s, it was making on-field uniforms for major Philadelphia sports teams such as theEagles football team and the Phillies baseball team. In the 1980s, the brand created the Mitchell & Ness Nostalgia Co. to design and sell replicas of historic sports jerseys.