Duckhead for Sale.

In a March 31, 2009 press release on Business Wire it was announced that Streambank, LLC, was retained to sell the intellectual asset portfolio of Goody’s Family Clothing. In January, Goody’s filed for a second time for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and announced it would liquidate its 282 remaining stores.

The Goody’s Private Brand trademark portfolio included: Duckhead, Ivy Crew for men, OCI for young men, juniors, and children, Goodclothes and Mountain Lake for misses, and Baby Crew for infants and toddlers.

The most famous is of course Duck Head. George and Joe O’Bryan, two brothers who were buying surplus U.S. Army tent material, founded the Duck Head brand in 1865 in Nashville, Tennessee. The material was a heavy canvas known as “duck”, and the brothers began making work pants and shirts. Delta Woodside Industries purchased the brand in 1989 in an attempt to create a national brand. It evolved into a preppy clothing brand commonly seen on college campus in the south in the 1980s and 1990s and four years was purchased by Goody’s who converted it to a Private Brand.

I have fond memories of growing up in Greenville, SC, not far from the Delta Woodside mills, and driving across town to go to a true factory outlet in a backroom of the mill. Duckheads (at that time if you said Duckheads it meant pants) as far as the eye could see in every color under the rainbow for unbelievable prices. In an age before Dockers, Duckheads were the southern students uniform and we loved them.

I hope a visionary retailer will realize the value in this once great brand, I miss a good pair of Duckheads. They had the character and cool that Dockers have never had without the price of Polo.