$200-Million-a-Year Sportswear Leader : Jantzen Swims Ahead of Tide
One popular T-shirt here shows a duck swimming in the rain and the words: “Oregonians Don’t Tan. They Rust.”
It strikes people as funny that a city known for its weeks of constant rain and no sunshine is also the headquarters of Jantzen Inc., one of the nation’s largest makers of swimwear.
From its origins 75 years ago as a sweater factory, the company has grown into a $200-million-a-year sportswear leader with 3,500 employees around the United States and Canada. But it is now enduring a torrent of another kind--the flood of Asian imports that has hurt scores of other American garment manufacturers. Jantzen, so far,has been able to swim ahead of the tide.
It has done that “by bringing latest techniques into our factories but reducing lead time and responding quickly to fashion changes,” according to Al Zindel, head of Jantzen’s women’s wear division. “We don’t deal 10 months in advance any more. We’re dealing two months in advance.”
Apparel imports from Asia rose 33% in 1984, compared to the year before, Zindel said. Imports have continued, accounting for an increasingly larger share of the U.S. apparel market as major department stores buy directly from manufacturers in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China and sew their own labels into the goods, he said.
“This trend has really exploded in the last three years, with 40% of apparel in most department stores now imported from Asia,” Zindel said. “To meet this challenge, Jantzen gets into the marketplace six months faster than companies overseas.” Along with stepping up deadlines and responding more quickly to fashion trends, Jantzen has doubled its merchandising and design staff, he added.
“Some buyers are beginning to realize inequities in dealing with the Orient, in quality, poor fits, inferior colors and styles and slow deliveries,” he said. “But the price overseas is so low, the 70% margin of profit so attractive. It’s a battle that isn’t easily won.”
The company “spends a tremendous amount of money designing lines,” added Catherine Nielsen, merchandise manager for women’s swimwear. “It’s the only way to stay on top.”
The company also continues to stress workmanship as a key to competing with Asian exporters. The phrase “Quality always comes first” is stitched on rugs and painted on entrances to Jantzen’s factories.
Jantzen manufactures 65 styles in women’s swimwear from bikinis and the latest high-thigh look to more conventional, conservative--and still popular--one-piece suits. Jantzen’s customers range in age from preteen girls to the septuagenarian members of the Orlando, Fla., Synchronization Swim Team.
The array of styles, fabrics and colors is a far cry from Jantzen’s first swimsuits, or “bathing costumes,” as they were called in 1913. At the request of a local rowing club, Portland Knitting Co. owners Carl C. Jantzen and brothers John and Roy Zehntbauer produced the first elasticized swimsuits ever made.
The idea caught on, and soon Portland Knitting was making more wool swimsuits than sweaters. When the owners decided to shift production entirely to swimsuits, they renamed the company and hit on “Jantzen” because they figured “Zehntbauer” would be too hard for people to remember.
In 1916, Jantzen added women’s swimsuits to its line, and by 1920 the company was the largest producer of swimsuits in the world.
During the 1930s and 1940s, synthetics replaced itchy wool. And in 1938, Jantzen went back to making sweaters as sportswear lines were added.
Today, about 33% of Jantzen sales are in swimsuits, 50% in sportswear and about 17% in career apparel. The company is also the nation’s largest producer of men’s tennis wear.
“Jantzen failed to make money only one year in its 75-year history,” in mid-Depression 1933, said Jerome Pool, 49, the company’s fourth president. “And it wasn’t my fault. That happened before I was born.” Pool, who has been president for two years, started working for Jantzen 28 years ago as a warehouse clerk.
“Never did I dream I would become president of the company,” he added.
Since 1980, Jantzen has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Bell Inc., the Greensboro, N.C.-based maker of Wrangler jeans, with annual sales of $1 billion.
Jantzen has two plants each in Oregon, Washington and South Carolina and one each in North Carolina, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska and British Columbia. The company maintains design studios in Los Angeles, New York and at the company’s five-square-block headquarters in Portland.
For all its flair as a modern sportswear maker, a piece of Jantzen’s past remains highly visible at headquarters. Jantzen’s diving-girl logo, once stitched in red in every women’s swimsuit, is carved in a wall, poised mid-dive in her old-fashioned bathing costume and cap.
