A Texas family sells, and the buyer sells again
On October 2, 2017, a family in Fort Worth, Texas sold the company their grandfathers had started in 1922. F20 F22
The buyer paid eight hundred and twenty million dollars in cash for it. F20
Eight years later, on November 12, 2025, that buyer sold the same brand again, for six hundred million — two hundred million less than it paid. F24
The brand is Dickies, and the second buyer does not sew clothes at all. F23
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One thing before we start.
The one case that goes the other way
Normally the story goes one way. A family builds something, the family sells it, and the name survives as paperwork on a product the founders would not recognize.
This is the other case. While Dickies was being sold twice, and while Wrangler and Lee were packed into a new company and handed to shareholders, one American workwear name stayed exactly where it was.
Carhartt was founded in 1889, in Detroit, Michigan, by a man named Hamilton Carhartt. F1
It is still owned by his descendants. F1
That is also the reason Carhartt gets a different kind of criticism from the others. Let me show you both sides of it, and then the part you can use: what the tag inside your own jacket tells you, and what it does not.
Two sewing machines in a Detroit loft
Hamilton Carhartt was born on August 27, 1855, in Macedon Lock, New York. F5
In 1889 he started his company in a Detroit loft with two sewing machines. F2
The motto he put on it was honest value for an honest dollar. F2
The oldest object in the company's own archive is a pair of overalls from around 1889 — the first year. F3 F4
That archive exists because the company organised it as it came up to its one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary in 2014. F4
Think about what that requires. To have your first year's product still in the building, you have to have never been bought, broken up, moved or liquidated. Most of the names on this list cannot produce their own first product: the company that made it stopped existing and nobody kept the boxes.
The patent with the founder's name on it
In the early eighteen nineties Carhartt built a factory at 1605 Michigan Avenue in Detroit. F8
On November 20, 1914, Hamilton Carhartt, his son Hamilton junior, and a man named Oscar Kratz filed a patent for reinforced overalls. F9
It was granted as United States patent one million, one hundred fifty two thousand, two hundred eighty nine, on August 31, 1915, assigned to Hamilton Carhartt Manufacturer of Detroit. F9
This matters for a reason that is not nostalgia. The product was engineered by the founder, under his own name, and the drawing is in the public record. The reinforcement at the stress points, the thing people still buy the brand for, is in a document from 1915. F9
Three plants left, and a new one in Kentucky
Then the company nearly went under.
During the Great Depression Hamilton Carhartt and his son Wylie ran a campaign they called Back to the Land, aimed at farm and ranch workers. F7
By 1930, only three of the company's United States plants were still operating. F7
By 1932 the Detroit operation had moved out of the big factory on Michigan Avenue and into a much smaller building on Labrosse Street. F8
The old factory was demolished in 1940. F8
And in that same year, 1932, with the company shrinking, Carhartt finished a new sewing plant in Irvine, Kentucky. It opened with twenty employees and cost thirty five thousand dollars. F10
Twenty people. In the worst year the company ever had, it opened a plant in rural Kentucky — and Kentucky is going to come back three more times in this video, including in the bad news.
Hamilton Carhartt died on May 13, 1937, three days after a car accident in Grosse Pointe that also killed his wife. F6
The son-in-law nobody counted on
Here is what decides whether a family company survives: what happens when the founder's name is no longer the one in charge.
In 1959 Wylie Carhartt was succeeded at the head of the company by his son-in-law, Robert Valade. F11
A son-in-law. The surname on the building stopped being the surname of the man running it in 1959 F11 — and the family kept control anyway, because what passed down was the ownership, not the name.
In 1998, after his father Robert died, Mark Valade became president. F12
Gretchen Carhartt Valade, the founder's granddaughter, became chairperson of the board. F12 F15
Mark Valade is Hamilton Carhartt's great-grandson, and he is chairman and chief executive. F15 F16
And in 1998 the company was doing an estimated three hundred and seven million dollars a year — roughly three times what it had reported in 1992. F13
It had bought the room to do that in advance: a sixty four thousand square foot sewing plant in Glasgow, Kentucky in 1992, and a hundred and twenty thousand square foot plant in McKenzie, Tennessee in 1994. F14
The family owns it, a professional runs it
Now the honest version, because this is not an advertisement. Family ownership does not mean the family runs the day. Linda Hubbard joined Carhartt in 2002, and she is the first person who is not a family member to be president and chief executive in the company's one hundred and thirty five years. F17
So the correct sentence is narrower than the catalogue's. The family owns it. A professional runs it — and that second part is what most family companies refuse to do until it is too late.
Carhartt is private, so there are no filings to check. The public estimate is about one point eight billion dollars of revenue in 2024 and around five thousand five hundred employees — an estimate, not a disclosure. F18
The company describes itself as fifth generation and family run, headquartered in metro Detroit. F19
The rack: sold twice, and handed out
Now put that next to the rack it hangs on.
Dickies. F20 Williamson-Dickie was founded in 1922 in Fort Worth, Texas, when C.D. Williamson and E.E. Dickie bought the U.S. Overall Company. F22 It stayed a family-owned private company until October 2, 2017, when VF Corporation bought it for eight hundred and twenty million dollars in cash. F20 VF's own quarterly filing puts the final number at eight hundred point seven million. F21
Then VF sold it. On September 15, 2025, VF agreed to sell Dickies to Bluestar Alliance for six hundred million dollars in cash. F23 The sale closed on November 12, 2025, with proceeds of six hundred point five million. F24 VF's chief executive said the sale would bring the company's net debt down. F25
A hundred and three year old workwear name went from a Texas family, to a clothing conglomerate, to a brand management firm in eight years — and sold for two hundred million less the second time. F20 F24
Wrangler and Lee. VF entered denim by buying the Lee Company in 1969, and doubled its own size in 1986 by buying Blue Bell, which brought Wrangler with it. F29 Then, on May 22, 2019, VF spun the whole jeanswear business out as a separate public company called Kontoor Brands. F26 Shareholders got one Kontoor share for every seven VF shares they held on the record date. F27 By the end of that year Kontoor employed about fifteen thousand one hundred people, of whom about three thousand seven hundred were in the United States. F28
Nobody bought Wrangler and Lee. They were distributed.
And it kept going. On April 29, 2021, VF sold its occupational work brands — Red Kap, Bulwark, Workrite, Walls, Terra, Kodiak and Horace Small — to an investment firm called Redwood Capital. F30
Filson was sold by one private equity owner to another in June 2012. F31
Woolrich: in September 2018 a Luxembourg investment firm bought a majority stake, and the founding Rich family walked away after seven generations. F32
The link is in the description.
What everybody gets wrong about Levi's
At this point you are waiting for Levi's, and the obvious line is wrong.
Levi Strauss went public in 2019. F33 It would be easy to put it on the sold pile. It does not belong there.
In the 2019 offering prospectus, every Class B share carries ten votes, and after the offering Class B holders would hold about ninety nine percent of the voting power. F33
The company's own annual report for 2025 says the dual class structure concentrates voting control with descendants of the family of Levi Strauss. F34
As of January 23, 2026 there were about one hundred and three point seven million Class A shares and about two hundred and eighty six point seven million Class B shares outstanding. F35
And before the listing, the filings said nearly all of the common equity was owned by descendants of the founder's family and their relatives. F36
So: a company can be on a stock exchange and still be controlled by the founding family. If somebody tells you Levi's sold out in 2019, the filing says otherwise — what it sold was shares without the votes. F33 F34
Two names on that rack are still in family hands. The rest changed owner, some of them twice.
If it never sold, why does the jacket feel different
Which brings us to the complaint. If Carhartt never sold, why do people say their jacket is not what it was? The answer is in a different column of the ledger, and the company's own history makes it easy to trace.
October 16, 2012: Carhartt launched a Made in America line, sewn in Tennessee and Kentucky plants, providing over nine hundred jobs to members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. F37
A line. Launched. In 2012. F37 You do not launch a Made in America line if everything you sell is already made in America.
Six years later, in November 2018, the Alliance for American Manufacturing reported that Carhartt employed about two thousand two hundred American workers, and had made eighty million garments and accessories in the United States over the previous fifteen years. F38
Now the other direction.
On November 23, 2005, Carhartt announced it would close plants in Sebree and Morehead, Kentucky, and cut a hundred jobs at Glasgow. F39
In March 2009 it closed the Glasgow distribution centre, seventy one employees, and a sorting facility, twenty nine more — about a hundred jobs again. F40
Kentucky, the state where the twenty person plant opened in 1932. F10 F39
Mexico, October 2023
Then the number that complicates the easy story.
On October 9, 2023, Carhartt told workers it was closing its plants in Durango, Mexico, affecting between eight hundred and one thousand employees, winding down between October 9 and October 20. F41
The same closure covered a plant in Pénjamo, Guanajuato, with about seven hundred employees, bringing the Mexican plants closed to three. F42
One widely read reference says four factories and about two thousand workers, and I am giving you both numbers because they disagree and I cannot settle it. F43
So the shape of it is this. A company still owned by one family has, over twenty years, closed plants in Kentucky and then closed plants in Mexico. Ownership stayed put. Production moved, and then moved again. F39 F41
That is the finding, and it is not the one I expected. Not selling the company does not mean not moving the work.
What the tag in your seam actually says
So what do you do with a garment in your hand?
Here is the part I had to check twice, because most of what is written about Carhartt tags online comes from resellers, not from the company.
First: the style number. Carhartt's own trade-in page says it is at the bottom left of the in-seam tag, and gives real examples: J140, K288, and 102776. F44
Two of those are a letter and three digits. One is six digits and no letter. Neither is a fake: the company lists both formats itself. F44
Second, and this is the one that trips people: the number beginning RN is not the style number. Carhartt states that directly. F44 RN fourteen eight oh six is a Registered Identification Number, and under federal rules a textile label has to carry the fiber content, the country where the product was processed or manufactured, and either the company name or an RN. F44 F47
So the RN identifies the company. It tells you nothing about which garment you are holding, and nothing about where it was made.
Third, where it actually says the country. Take the recall as the worked example, because it is a public document with the real tag described in it. On March 30, 2023, the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled about thirty two thousand five hundred and five Carhartt Men's Force Relaxed 5 Pocket Work Pants, sold at Dick's Sporting Goods from July through November 2022 for about seventy dollars. F45
The notice says the product number, one zero five two two two, is on a tag inside the seam near the waistband — and that those pants were manufactured in India. F46
A six digit product number, in the seam, made in India, sold in an American chain in 2022, by a company owned by the founder's family. All four are true at once, and the tag is where they stop being a debate.
The three extra words on a Made in U.S.A. label
One more rule, and it is the FTC's, not mine.
A label may say Made in U.S.A. only if the product is made entirely in the United States of United States made materials. If the materials are imported, the label has to say Made in U.S.A. of imported material. F48
So those three extra words are not decoration. Made in U.S.A. and Made in U.S.A. of imported material are two different legal claims about two different garments. F48
That is the whole method. Find the in-seam tag. The style or product number is bottom left, letter plus digits or six digits. F44 The RN is the company, not the garment. F44 The country line is the country line, and if it says Made in U.S.A., read whether anything follows it. F47 F48
Both columns, side by side
The two columns, side by side.
Sold: Dickies, from a Fort Worth family to VF in 2017, from VF to a brand firm in 2025. F20 F24 Wrangler and Lee, bought in 1969 and 1986, spun out in 2019. F29 F26 Red Kap and Bulwark, sold in 2021. F30 Filson, 2012. F31 Woolrich, 2018, after seven generations. F32
Not sold: Carhartt, 1889 to today, owned by Hamilton Carhartt's descendants, run since 2002 by someone from outside the family. F1 F17 And Levi Strauss, listed on an exchange and still voting-controlled by the founder's descendants. F34
And the honest asterisk on the good column: the family that did not sell the company closed plants in Kentucky in 2005 and 2009, launched a Made in America line in 2012, and closed its Mexican plants in 2023. F39 F40 F37 F41
One last sign of what the family actually defends: Carhartt and Costa Del Mar settled their dispute over competing stylised letter C logos on May 22, 2025, with the parties given until July 16, 2025 to file the dismissal papers. F49 The thing a family company guards is the mark itself.
Continuity of ownership is worth something. It is why the 1889 overalls are still in the building and why there is a patent with the founder's signature on it. F3 F9 It is not a promise about the garment on the shelf, and the tag in the seam is the only part of this that answers that question. F46
What do you still own
One last document worth your time. The oldest thing in Carhartt's archive is a pair of overalls from the company's first year, and the archive was organised for the hundred and twenty fifth anniversary. F3 F4 Finding a company's own first product still inside the company is rare enough to be the story by itself.
If one name in this video surprised you, it was probably Levi's, and the filing is on that page too. F33
Before you go, one question, and I read the answers. What do you still own that outlived the company that made it? Put it in the comments: the year, and the name on the tag.
Next time, the same question asked of a different shelf: who actually owns the badge on the furnace in your basement. Subscribe and it will find you.