
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 20, 1995                   TAG: 9507200033
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LAST HURRAH FOR COLLEGIATE PACIFIC

Collegiate Pacific screenprinters in Roanoke will close at the end of the month, eliminating 35 to 40 jobs and shutting one of the last places in the nation where felt collegiate pennants with names like Yale and Notre Dame are made.

Also, Collegiate Pacific is the last component in the area of what once was a Roanoke-based company, Littlefield, Adams & Co. Littlefield, now based in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., had its headquarters in Roanoke from 1987 to late 1991, when it moved to San Antonio, Texas.

The Roanoke plant, which makes pennants, banners and sportswear, has lost money "for many years," said Jerry Luloff, president of Littlefield's apparel group. "We did make a concerted effort definitely to try to turn it around and keep it going."

Employees were notified June 28 they would lose their jobs unless the plant was sold to a new owner. No severance package was offered, but the company will try to help find employees other work if a buyer cannot be found, Luloff said. He declined to give the plant's asking price, saying the company is talking with a potential buyer.

Luloff said Wednesday that the addition of machinery last year at the plant at 1302 Rockland Ave. N.W. failed to lure enough new business to keep it viable. Littlefield will continue making sportswear in Dayton, Ohio.

According to plant manager Charlie Atkins, Collegiate Pacific was founded in the 1940s in Ames, Iowa, and merged with the Littlefield publishing company of New Jersey to form Littlefield, Adams. That company bought Tex-Art, a Roanoke sportswear screenprinter, in about 1967.

The company prospered for a time, making goods for college bookstores and Disney theme parks. Its fortunes ebbed when textile mills and Disney entered the imprinting business, Atkins said.

After becoming a public, shareholder-owned company in about 1980, Littlefield was controlled first by a group of Roanoke investors who moved the headquarters to Roanoke in 1987 and later by an investor group that took it to San Antonio in 1991, Atkins said. A Security and Exchange Commission investigation was followed last year by the ouster of the Littlefield's chairman and the lead San Antonio investor, Curtis A. Younts Jr.

Through numerous expansions and contractions, the company has continued to make the wool pennants of 50 years ago, as do two or three other companies in the nation, Atkins said. Although the market for them isn't what it used to be and Collegiate will end its production, "the comment I heard over and over is, it's the best wool felt pennant made today," Atkins said.

by CNB