A perfect fit
Cuda Apparel Inc. and Buffalo LLC — two companies specializing in custom and licensed sports apparel and merchandise — recently merged.
The new company, dubbed Cuda Buffalo Apparel, has combined annual sales of about $5 million a year, a modern 25,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, three retail showrooms and an increasingly popular network of e-commerce stores.
Steve Danzig, one of six owners and the company spokesman, said the merger will help the business meet demands from Internet sales, which are doubling each month.
“We are able to cover more ground together than we would have been able to separately,” Danzig said.
More than two years ago Danzig purchased Vyper Sportswear, a 7-year-old company that evolved into Cuda Apparel Inc. — a business that’s gaining notoriety for its e-store concept.
The Internet-based stores carry merchandise designed with company or school logos and colors. Customers include Sysco Corp. and several other Fortune 500 companies.
Cuda Buffalo charges a one-time fee of $200 to $500 to set up the e-stores, then takes orders through those sites. Businesses that offer the Web stores receive 15 percent of the gross profit made on sales through the sites, which they can keep or offer as a discount to employees, Danzig said.
The e-commerce sites also are offered to schools — with no charge for set-up — and 12 local high schools currently have sites catering to student groups. Lewis and Clark High School’s track team, for example, has an e-store where parents, coaches and players can shop for team apparel and merchandise.
Now Cuda Buffalo is expanding the e-store concept to high school DECA Clubs, whose members are students interested in marketing and business management.
DECA students would help design the e-stores, run them as businesses and, in the process, learn everything from marketing to creating and analyzing spreadsheets. Cuda Buffalo’s staff will be available to answer questions and provide an online tutorial to help students through the process, said Danzig, adding, “It gives the students the opportunity to really learn business.”
DECA clubs would keep 15 percent of the gross sales. With increasingly more schools banning the sale of candy and pop, the e-commerce sites could fill fundraising needs while enhancing company sales, he said.
The e-stores are rapidly catching on, said Zane Troester, general manager of the company, which sells more than 12,000 custom items in batches of two to several thousand at a time.
The company is a licensed manufacturer of logo apparel for a half-dozen colleges and universities in the region, including Gonzaga University and Washington State University. Recently Cuda Buffalo took college apparel a step further by setting up e-stores with merchandise representing two large online universities. Within the first three days, students and alumni of American InterContinental University and Colorado Technical University Online placed 325 orders, Troester said.