Champion: the brand that went from cheap to heat in a matter of years! The company’s rise to fame has been the farthest from traditional while riding a rollercoaster of gaining it, losing it, and gaining it back again. With Champion at the top of their game once again, we’ve decided to take a look back at its rise to fame, the fall and notable resurrection, sending the century-old company to the top of vintage-wear.
The brand was originally founded in 1919 as the “Knickerbocker Knitting Company” by William and Abraham Feinbloom. After changing the company name to “Champion Athletics” in 1923, the brothers quickly found success from supplying the demand for athletic-wear and selling the product directly to college teams, primarily Michigan State. The brand’s popularity began to grow rapidly with college teams as well as students since Champion products were now being sold in college bookstores for students to wear.
Around this time, the company invented something that would change the fashion world forever: the hoodie. They created the hoodie to protect athletes from cold conditions while training and their Reverse Weave technique soon followed. The Reverse Weave featured anti-shrink and heat preventive technologies and, to this day, is still being used in the brand’s designs. These pioneering technologies helped Champion strengthen its grip on sportswear, which only grew throughout the 20th century.
The brand continued to get bigger and bigger, partnering with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the 1960s as well as the National Football League (NFL) in the 1970s. These partnerships helped propel Champion Athletics further into the spotlight as sales doubled from 1985 to 1988, leading the company to become the face of sportswear in America. In 1989, the Sara Lee Corporation, already owning Hanes, bought out Champion for $320M in cash. This gave the company more resources to work with as well as the opportunity to expand the brand even further than before. Champion soon peaked in the early 1990s, as the brand began producing all of the uniforms throughout the National Basketball Association (NBA) league along with creating the jerseys for the Olympic ‘Dream Team’ in 1992. This helped the company gain global recognition until the late ‘90s, where their popularity started to steadily decline.
The decline of Champion was the result of Sara Lee, the general public losing interest in the brand as well as the failed XFL League. Champion had been chosen to outfit the league. As the XFL fell apart, Champion started to as well. The Sara Lee Corporation was one of the main factors in the brand’s decline, however. The parent company was now not paying Champion the same level of attention as in the past and was moving interests more towards the food industry. Initially, the Sara Lee Corporation had decided to sell Champion along with Coach, but in the end decided against it, only selling Champion Europe instead. As you can imagine, once Champion Europe had been sold, the company did not have the same number of resources or capabilities as before, contributing to the decline.
In 2006, after the Sara Lee Corporation began to focus strongly on the food industry, they announced HanesBrands Inc., a separate company containing all of the clothing brands under one umbrella. In 2016, HanesBrands bought Champion Europe and reunited it with its origin company, helping kickstart Champion’s return to the spotlight.
In 2015, Champion released a collaboration hoodie with Supreme, which saw a fair amount of success and led to more collaborations between the two brands. Soon after, Champion also created a reversible sweatshirt with Vetements. The two brands released their Capsule Collection collaboration in late 2016, which also saw major success. Capitalizing on the momentum, Champion began collaborating with more and more brands, racking up more success and getting even closer to the stardom they had once before.
In addition, there is no denying that the brand has risen back to stardom due to the popularity of vintage wear. Recently, brands from the ‘80s and ‘90s have come back into the fashion spotlight as vintage, generating buzz for these brands and helping them gain traction once again. Some of these brands include Fila, Tommy Hilfiger as well as Guess, with Champion being at the buzz forefront.
With the increasing number of people buying clothing from these brands again, many have seen success skyrocket. Champion has risen back to stardom through its old and new designs, the popularity of vintage wear, and the countless collaborations. It’s safe to say that Champion is at the top of its game right now! Champion coming back to the light after years of failure and continuous decline makes us wonder what other brands are on their way back to stardom. Tell us what you think in the comments!