S&K sees potential in the uniform business

By GREGORY J. GILLIGAN
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Published: March 31, 2008

S&K Famous Brands Inc. is the latest competitor to jump into the uniform business.

The Henrico County-based discount menswear retailer has created a division to design and sell uniforms and other corporate apparel to companies for their employees to buy.

The selection of clothing ranges from uniforms worn by housekeeping or culinary workers to health-care workers and valet parking attendants. S&K also can outfit workers who need specially tailored suits for, say, front-desk work at a hotel.

The idea behind S&K Corporate Apparel is to give companies an alternative for workers so they can buy uniforms rather than rent them, said Joseph A. Oliver III, S&K’s president and chief executive officer.

“We are good at sourcing clothes,” he said. “We have customers who own their own businesses and need different types of uniforms. We have people to design them, get the company’s approval on the design, have them made and then get them to the employees.”

And an added benefit, Oliver said, is employees can get their uniforms altered at one of S&K’s 220 stores in 26 states.

“That makes us different from others in the uniform business,” he said, adding that many uniform companies send out the clothing to be altered or have the employees handle it.

S&K is focusing its attention for the new division on corporate accounts in the Richmond area. The company has signed up about 20 accounts so far.

During the next two years, Oliver said, S&K will focus on other markets in Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic.

The retailer expects to generate about $5 million in sales a year in about five years, he said.

“Our core business will stay retail stores,” he said.

But Oliver said the uniform business should help draw people into S&K stores who may not have shopped there before.

For instance, employees who go to a S&K store to get their uniform altered might pick up a suit or a pair of slacks or shirt. The chain will give that worker a discount on those purchases.

S&K Corporate Apparel will compete with Ukrop’s Dress Express, the uniform business that is a partnership between James E. Ukrop, chairman of Ukrop’s Super Markets Inc., and his brother, Robert S. Ukrop, the chain’s president and chief executive. Ukrop’s Dress Express has grown to 1,200-plus national accounts since being created in 1993.

But Oliver said his new division is different because companies can have employees pick up and have their uniform altered at S&K stores.

S&K also competes with TwinHill Corporate Apparel, the uniform division of The Men’s Wearhouse that the retailer acquired in 2002.

Identity crisis
What’s in a name? Elizabeth Howard, owner of the Paper with Style shop in Petersburg, has learned the hard way.

She opened her paper and gift store in May and began operating a Web site in February.

She registered the store’s name in Virginia.

But Howard found out recently that a Georgia-based company operates a retail store called Paper Style. That company claimed the Virginia company’s name was too similar to the phrase it trademarked for its stores years ago.

Paper with Style at 8 Bollingbrook St. is in the same industry, Howard said, so she has to stop using the name. She shut down her Web site. Her store remains open.

She is in the process of coming up with a new name for both operations. She has a couple of names in mind but is conducting a trademark research on them.

The online store will be restored once the new store name has been established. The shop’s name also will be changed.

“It’s been a big lesson,” Howard said.
Contact Gregory J. Gilligan at (804) 649-6379 or .