Sportif's brave new world

Bobbin, July, 1998 by Kathleen DesMarteau

Today, Sportif USA is privately held by the Kirsch family, including its founder's four sons and two daughters. Sons active in the business include the firm's president, John Kirsch, 31; vice president, Steven Kirsch, 28; factory manager, Sportif Lanka, Jeff Kirsch, 29; and sales representative, Rocky Mountain territory, Michael Kirsch, 25.

The Product:

Apparel lines include casual sportswear, such as shorts (retail price $44-$67), slacks (retail price $40-$74); skirts and skirts (retail price $44-$50); and shirts and tops (retail price $30-$62); as well as skiwear and high-tech outerwear (retail price $130-$270).

Customer Base:

* 1,385 retail clients, including almost 2,500 storefronts (primarily U.S. outdoor specialty stores, with some international distribution at resort locales); 25 mail order houses (Travel Smith, Outer Banks, L.L. Bean, Cabella's, West Marine, etc.).

* Sportif USA has its own catalog, which is distributed across the United States.

Sales - Production Volume:

$20 million - 800,000 units annually.

Company Headquarters:

Sparks, NV (a suburb of Reno) - headquarters since 1970; 42 employees, 41,000 square feet; houses administration, product development, CAD, sourcing and production management, customer service (including catalog order fulfillment), warehousing and distribution (including a 30,000-square-foot foreign trade zone).

Manufacturing Facilities:

Sportif Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd. - founded August 1990 in Kelaniya (about 15 minutes from Colombo by car); 700 employees; 50,000 square feet; more than $350,000 invested in new equipment in the past two years.

Sportif Mexico S.A. de C.V. - founded March 1995 in San Luis in the Mexican state of Sonora (near Mexico's U.S. border with Arizona); 200 employees; 28,000 square feet, including company-subsidized cantina and daycare center (this operation is serviced by Sportif's San Luis, AZ, cutting room, which employs eight).

RELATED ARTICLE: THE FTZ ADVANTAGE

Sportif USA Inc. joined the ranks of some 3,200 U.S. businesses that utilize foreign trade zones (FTZs) in 1997, and has been reaping the financial rewards ever since.

Sportif's FTZ, which occupies 30,000 square feet of its warehouse in Sparks, NV, allows the company to delay duty payments on goods imported from its Sri Lankan manufacturing subsidiary until the apparel is released to customers. With duties that can reach as high as 30 percent of product value, the FTZ has helped Sportif defer considerable expenses, and invest these savings back into the business.

"We're going to spend the dollars on duty anyway," says Sportif controller Doug Moir. "It's just a matter of taking that 25 percent to 30 percent savings and putting it into inventories or fixed assets or whatever other need we have for it."

Although goods received into the FTZ must remain in a bonded state, the company can open its goods for quality inspections. Customs conducts random audits of all FTZs to ensure that shipments contain the exact contents reported by the FTZ operator. Sportif's new Paragon software system reduces the potential for error in FTZ storage because it enables the company to manage data for goods flowing in and out of multiple warehouses, and to track each warehouse's traffic separately.