Fruit of the Loom
Fruit of the Loom is an American company that manufactures clothing, particularly casual wear and underwear. The company's world headquarters is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Since 2002, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
Company type
1851
in Warwick, Rhode Island, U.S. (as "B.B and R Knight Corp.)[1]
Worldwide
32,400
-
- Russell Athletic
- Spalding
- Vanity Fair (intimates)
Products manufactured by Fruit of the Loom itself and through its subsidiaries include clothing (t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, sweatpants, shorts and lingerie), and sports equipment (softballs and basketballs) manufactured and commercialized by Spalding.
Company profile[edit]
Fruit of the Loom is one of the largest manufacturers and marketers of underwear, printable T-shirts and fleece for the activewear industry, casualwear, women's jeanswear, and childrenswear. The company employs more than 32,400 people worldwide.
The company's logo comprises a red apple, leaves, green grapes, purple grapes, and white currants (or yellow gooseberries),[3] but not a cornucopia. In July 2023, a Snopes reporter said that a search of newspaper advertisements between the 1920s and 2020s revealed none that depicted a cornucopia — this is often cited as an example of the Mandela Effect.[4]
The company is a vertically integrated manufacturer. In 2006, Fruit of the Loom acquired Russell Brands, LLC, a global company whose brands included Russell Athletic, Brooks Running, and Spalding, among other names in athletic wear.[5] The purchase amount was $600 million.[6]
History[edit]
Rhode Island beginnings[edit]
The origin of the Fruit of the Loom company dates back to 1851 in Rhode Island,[7][8] when textile mill owner Robert Knight and his brother Benjamin established the "B.B. and R. Knight Corporation" after they acquired the Pontiac Mills in Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1856, the company introduced the brand name "Fruit of the Loom", while producing its first muslins.[2]
A friend of Robert Knight named Rufus Skeel owned a small shop in Providence that sold cloth from Knight's mill. Skeel's daughter painted images of apples and applied them to the bolts of cloth. The ones with the apple emblems proved most popular. Knight thought the labels would be the perfect symbol for his trade name, Fruit of the Loom – an expression referring to clothes, paralleling the phrase "fruit of the womb", which can be traced back to the Bible (Psalm 127:3).[9]
In 1871, just one year after the first trademark laws were passed by Congress, Knight received trademark number 418 for the brand "Fruit of the Loom". Much of its athletic outerwear was sold under the "Pro Player" label, a now defunct division.
