CEO led VF Corp. past Levi in jeans sales
Lawrence Pugh, who built VF Corp. into the largest publicly held U.S. apparel manufacturer and propelled it past Levi Strauss & Co. as the biggest jeans maker by adding Wrangler to its Lee brand, has died. He was 82.
He died Dec. 3 in Naples, Fla., his wife, Jean Pugh, said in a telephone interview. The cause was respiratory failure.
As CEO from 1982 to 1995, Pugh increased annual sales at VF, then based in Wyomissing, Pa., almost seven-fold to $5.06 billion US through acquisitions and marketing innovations.
His purchase in 1986 of Blue Bell Holdings, then the second-largest jeans maker, added the Wrangler label to VF’s Lee brand. The $792-million US purchase, including $414 million US of assumed debt, gave the combined company 27 per cent of the U.S. jeans market, overtaking San Francisco-based Levi Strauss, with 22 per cent.
The jeans business “grows a little and declines a little,” Pugh said, according to a New York Times profile following the Blue Bell deal. “But still it’s a huge business. It’s the biggest single category within the apparel business, and we think it has great opportunities.”
The acquisition of Blue Bell, which was based in Greensboro, N.C., also added Jantzen swimwear and sportswear to VF’s product lines.
VF was among the first companies to market denim jeans to women in the early 1980s. It later capitalized on expanding markets for outdoor and action sports, and flamboyant lingerie. VF’s brands included Vanity Fair, the second-largest bra maker, and Health-Tex children’s clothes, which Pugh added in 1991.
“We are covering every retail segment and every consumer segment, and we are No. 1 in each category because of our multiple brand strategy,” he said, according to a 1992 profile in Chief Executive magazine.
In the early 1990s, Pugh oversaw development of a “quick response” inventory-management system. The electronic network linked VF’s plants and distribution centres with retail outlets such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. locations. Records of individual sales of jeans were transmitted to the manufacturer, enabling VF to replenish a retailer’s stock within a week.
At a time when 55 per cent of garments sold in the U.S. were manufactured outside the country, VF under Pugh stood out for making most of its products in its home market.
“We can do this because we are not in ‘high-needle’ sewing labour products,” he said, according to Chief Executive, referring to labour-intensive garments such as women’s dresses and men’s suits.
Today, VF owns the North Face, Nautica and Timberland brands, and is based in Greensboro.
His survivors include his wife, former Jean Van Curan, whom he married in 1956; their daughters, Deborah Pugh Kelton and Diane Pugh Esecson; and four grandsons.