Workwear Apparel Giant Dickies Announces Surprise HQ Move to California From Texas

Dickies, one of the largest workwear companies in the world, made the surprise announcement on Thursday that they will be moving the companies headquarters from Fort Worth, Texas to Costa Mesa in Orange County, doing largely the opposite of what other companies have done with California in recent years.

The Denver-based VF Corporation bought Dickies in 2017. VF created a brand campus for one of their brands, Vans, in Costa Mesa not long after. Wanting to keep the companies close together, and also wanting to revitalize the brand, VF chose to move to Costa Mesa, which happened to Dickies on Thursday.

Since the beginning of the decade, dozens of large companies have moved their companies out of California to cities in other states. While each move had multiple factors, an underlying theme has been companies wanting to move to avoid both high Californian taxes and avoid stricter business regulations in the state. This has included Hewlett Packard, the Oakland Raiders and Oracle leaving in 2020, Tesla leaving in 2021, and Chevron, X and Space X moving to Texas earlier this year. Others, such as the Oakland Athletics, are expected to leave the state in the next several years as well.

The companies leaving also coincided with many tech companies in the state, particularly around the Bay Area, shedding tens of thousands of jobs. While there were dozens of such layoffs affecting 100 employees or more, large cuts, such as Salesforce having so many rounds of firings that they had to give up an entire office building, 12,000 at Google, and 10,000 at Meta showed that even California committed companies needed to make drastic decisions to survive. Even Apple, the poster child company of California success, had their first layoffs. Tech is also by far not the only industry to be affected, as even the entertainment industry has been leaking productions out of California for years because of the high costs.

In turn, few companies have moved to California itself since 2020. While some moved for practical reasons, such as wanting to be near West Coast shipping points and other factors, some also moved to be closer to their customer base, such as when Sony moved their video game division from Tokyo to California.

That’s why Dickies surprised many on Thursday when they announced that they would be leaving Texas for California. A workwear clothing company since 1922, they have been headquartered in Texas since the beginning and rapidly grew following WWII.

“VF has decided that it will be relocating the Dickies brand’s headquarters from Fort Worth, Texas, to an existing brand campus the company maintains in Costa Mesa, California,” said Ashley McCormack, director of external communications for VF, on Thursday. “This move allows VF to further consolidate its US real estate portfolio as part of its stated business turnaround strategy.

“While this was a tough call, we are confident this change will help us revitalize Dickies so we can carry on the brand’s heritage for years to come.”

Those specializing in company relocations told the Globe on Thursday that the Dickies move would likely not be sparking more companies to move back to California, but could show that there are changes in the wind.

“This was a corporate decision based on necessity, so let’s not spouting off on a California comeback just yet,” explained San Francisco-based tech lawyer David Singth to the Globe. “California lost a lot of companies in the past few years, and one big one coming to California isn’t exactly a net win.

“But, what this does show is that California can still be attractive to businesses. And odd the timing right? Right after the election when many new laws were brought in, including a halt to a higher minimum wage in California, suddenly companies are looking at California again. It’s too early to tell if more will be coming in because of that, especially since many other states are still more business friendly than California. This could be a fluke. But a large company moving to California out of the blue could begin a minor shift of companies testing the waters more out here. You know, ‘Let’s test it out for a year and see if the state screws us’. Also, notice they aren’t moving to the Bay Area or any place like that, but Orange County.

“Right now, we can chalk it up to a company decision based on necessity. But if more follow, especially in January after all the election changes take place, then we may have something.”