VF Corporation

American textiles group. It is headquartered in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. It controls 27 percent of the denim jeans market. It was founded in 1889, and the complete name is the Vanity Fair Corporation. After taking over the Wrangler and Lee jeans brands, it owns Jantzen (swimsuits and leotards), the Jansport backpack line, and the Spanish Vivesa company, reinforcing its control of the lingerie sector. Today, the group employs some 63,000 people.
&Quad;1999. The company celebrated the centennial of its foundation by absorbing six new brands: Brittania, Bestform, Lily of France, Fibrotek, Penn State Textile and Horace Small.
&Quad;2000. Acquisition of the brands Eastpack, Gitano, Chic Jeans, North Face and His.
&Quad;2001. VF Corporation launched its new internal lines of knitwear and swimwear. At the same time, the company took measures to reduce costs, which should result in savings of 115 million dollars a year.
&Quad;At the end of 2002 the company became profitable again, with a 6 percent increase in sales over the same period of the year before. As for the annual balance sheet, the net loss remained 154.5 million dollars, but the top management predicted a slight improvement in sales volume for the end of 2003, thanks especially to the sectors of outdoor wear, jeanswear and intimate wear. It was for these three sectors that further acquisitions were expected during the year.
&Quad;The label that did best in the European market in 2002 was Lee. It brought in double-digit growth and opened a London flagship store. Wrangler focused on the Asian market instead, with openings in China and Russia.
&Quad;2003, May. The first London and European shop of The North Face, brand in the VF universe, opened. The opening of the eighth retail outlet of the sports label crowned a clearly positive year, which saw sales in Europe, in the first quarter of 2003, rise by 73 percent compared with the same period in the previous year.