ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602030005
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
The people at Logo 7 Inc. of Indianapolis were gambling - with the company's money.
The Saturday before the Super Bowl, they gambled that the Dallas Cowboys would be the winner.
They readied several dozen screenprinting and clothing embroidery machines with images saluting the Cowboys as Super Bowl XXX champs. Long before the championship football game's opening coin toss, they spooned Cowboy blue and silver ink into the presses and loaded shiny colored thread on bobbins.
They brought the plant here to the brink of production. Then, they waited.
"Pizza's up," Bruce Breeden, the personnel manager, shouted Sunday night to a cafeteria brimming with employees. He doubled as a cook, whipping up hot wings to go with free slices while the game was on TV.
Logo 7, a division of Tultex Corp. of Martinsville, operates in a niche of the sportswear apparel business, in which rapid-fire production teams spring into action at the final gun or whistle of a big game.
In a matter of hours, they can slap the winner's names on thousands of shirts and sweats. Loaded onto trucks, the goods are whisked to retail distribution centers and airports in time to reach store shelves within only a day or two after the game, capturing consumers' interest and enthusiasm.
The items sell in heavy quantities for several days. "After that, the novelty wears off," said O. Randolph Rollins, Tultex executive vice president, general counsel and chief financial officer.
This is a business that Tultex has been in for three years, but that Logo 7 - founded by seven partners - helped pioneer a quarter-century ago. The lead partner, Tom Shine, now president and chief executive, hit upon the idea through his work as a Dallas Cowboys scout and before that a coach of the Indiana University football team.
Logo 7, purchased by Tultex in 1992, is aptly named. It's sole business is designing and producing wearing apparel bearing the logos of the pro teams and colleges and universities that carry the widest appeal. Its sales and those of a second Tultex purchase, Universal Industries Inc. of Mattapoisett, Mass., account for 35 percent of total company sales today and make up Tultex's licensed goods division.
Logo 7 makes the goods that coaches and team assistants wear during games, including the popular "shark's tooth" hats and tops that appeared on professional football sidelines in recent years.
A network of sales representatives follow the fortunes of sports franchises, trying to spot those that might spark the interest of a particular region of the country or enter the national spotlight. Artists, buyers, production crews and marketing experts take their ideas or come up with their own and run.
According to Danny Robertson, vice president of merchandising, the company pioneered a system in which, for example, retail buyers for Pittsburgh area stores ordered Steelers Super Bowl victory shirts on an "if-win" basis, meaning Logo 7 would make and ship the shirts only if the Steelers won.
Robertson has found Logo 7 fast-footed compared to Tultex's headquarters operations in Martinsville, where he has worked for most of his career with the company.
"If you tried to get Tultex to change something, sometimes it was like turning the Queen Mary around. It took you five or six miles to get the turn on that thing. They turn on a dime, here. Just bam," said Robertson, who has been at Logo 7 for a year.
But Tultex has brought needed discipline to Logo 7, not to mention the fact that Tultex covered its recent losses, Robertson said. This will be the first year Logo 7 has department budgets, and it only recently committed to finding out its market share, Robertson said.
On Super Bowl night, with employees chomping on pizza and wings in front of the TV, Logo 7 seemed to stand in sharp stark contrast to Tultex's Martinsville garment plant, which lumbers along in nonstop, one-speed production.
Hanging in a corridor are framed shots of Dallas Cowboy Troy Aikman, a friend of Shine. Aikman is paid at least $1 million under a four-year contract to wear Tultex duds when he is interviewed or goes out in public. It's a bargain, Robertson said, compared to the cost of buying regular advertising during major sports events or in magazines such as Sports Illustrated.
Aikman is suddenly on the cafeteria television, wearing a Logo 7 hat with a new cat whisker design for the 1996 season that will be available in stores. "Set the hook for next year," quipped Nick Dark, vice president of manufacturing. By giving potential customers a look at the hat now, "if it gets bad reviews, you can kill it."
The score stood at 27-17, the ratio that eventually sealed the Steelers' loss. But there were several minutes to play.
"Think that's a safe score?" asked Virginia Newsome, production artist manager, who was crafting a computerized shirt image in another room that was complete except for the final tally.
The consensus among supervisors at the table was: No, better wait. Dallas coach Barry Switzer may try to run up the score.
Why was Logo 7 betting on Dallas? They knew that the National Football Conference, to which Dallas belongs, has in the past garnered many more Super Bowl titles. And Logo 7 had more orders for Cowboys goods than for Steelers goods.
Production manager Jeff Moyer seemed little concerned that, should Pittsburgh have suddenly charged ahead and won, his floor crews would have needed 45 minutes to switch over machines to make Steeler victory shirts.
"What are you going to do if the Cowboys lose?" he was asked. Moyer replied, "Just go for it."
Taking it all in was Tony Lambert, third shift shipping supervisor, who had set out a supply of red freight labels in the warehouse area. The color signifies a package must be delivered overnight.
"I'm getting ready to go put my coffee on. It's going to be a long night," Lambert said.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Danny Robertson\Vice president for merchandising. color.by CNB2. AP. Edward Washington (left) pulls a shirt off the presses as Leo
Sinitsky puts a Super Bowl hologram sticker on each shirt at the
Logo 7 plant in Indianapolis.