Apparel

Today is August 31. Summer is over. Though the start date of fall is September 23, the school bells, holiday promos and fall fashion lines suggest otherwise. In a way, the cooler weather is good. The more clothing end-users have to wear, the more you can sell your clients. 

In celebration of Bring Comfort To Your Community Day on September 1, Atlanta-based Boxercraft is donating more than 7,000 new garments to the 10 winners of its charity contest.

Delta Apparel Inc. will report its fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal 2011 financial results on today, after the market closes. The company will also hold a conference call with senior management to discuss the financial results at 4:30 p.m. ET.

These are the products you need during a weather emergency, assuming the weather emergency is happening somewhere else.

I asked a few of the industry's leading suppliers for their thoughts. Here are their answers.

TSC Apparel, Cincinnati, announced the acquisition of All Star Activewear, an apparel wholesaler located in Houston, Texas.

Hurricane Irene threatens to damage about a quarter of the cotton areas in Georgia, the second-largest grower in the U.S., and a large part of South Carolina, when it makes landfall, a weather forecaster said.

Irene was forecast to reach the eastern Florida coast and hit South Carolina on Aug. 27, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It may affect Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, causing about $2.2 billion in losses, according to an initial estimate by Kinetic Analysis Corp., a risk modeling firm in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The New York Post is reporting that Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle, who last summer purchased a 6 percent equity stake in the company, is now offering to take over American Apparel's debt.

From the Post: "One possible outcome is that an $84 million term loan from British-based Lion Capital—whose punishing interest rate of 18 percent has sapped American Apparel’s liquidity—could be partly or entirely refinanced to a rate as low as 7 percent, according to a person briefed on the talks."

Further details on the story can be found by clicking through to the Post.

River's End Trading Company, Hopkins, Minn., announced the merge of the River's End and Page & Tuttle divisions to form one united team with one sales force, one catalog, one product offering and one website.

AnaJet Inc. released the mPower, a new high-capacity, high-performance direct to garment printer at The NBM Show in Long Beach, California.

The mPower mP10 demonstrated at the show prints a typical color graphic in about 34 seconds. The entry level mP5 requires about double that time, keeping pace with the fastest digital apparel printers.

"Both mPower printers use specially-engineered industrial-strength print heads to increase production speed, significantly reduce clogging, and eliminate costly maintenance cycles," said Don Rasmussen, co-founder and director of engineering at AnaJet, Inc.