Employees of Kitsbow, maker of premium cycling clothing and accessories, have the company with assistance of a group of local North Carolina investors. Effective immediately, employees own a majority of the shares in Kitsbow Apparel, PBC, which is organized as a Delaware public benefit corporation.
A public benefit corporation (PBC) empowers leadership of the organization to embrace “social and public good” of customers and employees, while operating in a responsible and sustainable manner, and places the interests of shareholders on equal footing.
Diversity and inclusion are values threaded throughout a PBC. In contrast, traditional corporations are required to put shareholder return above all other priorities.
In addition, Kitsbow has started the process to become a certified B Corp from the nonprofit B Lab. B Corp Certification requires a holistic review of a business’s social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency, and is based on a vision of creating a community of for-profit companies committed to redefining success in business.
Since relocating to Old Fort, North Carolina, in late 2019, Kitsbow has embraced numerous initiatives such as training a workforce with no prior experience making premium apparel, helping build trails in Old Fort for access by all, making personal protective equipment for first responders and medical professionals, making apparel in a sustainable way to better protect the planet, building and operating a unique retail service with excellent and healthy food made locally, hosting the first bike shop in Old Fort in decades, using only compostable materials in all shipping and packaging, and creating generous employee benefits, including 100 percent health insurance paid by the company.
“When the opportunity to buy the brand and all of its assets became available, the employee leadership was unanimous in doing so as a public benefit corporation, and immediately starting the process for certification as a B Corp as well,” said David Billstrom, CEO of Kitsbow. “We have been embracing social and public good since we landed in North Carolina to make clothes, so it was a natural step to make.”
All Kitsbow employees in Old Fort are expected to stay, and all hourly employees received a significant raise effective January 2, to reflect the increased cost of living in Old Fort.
Kitsbow no longer will have employees or an office in California, completing the transition announced in August 2019.
Billstrom will hold the same title and role in the new organization and will report to a new Board of Directors structured to be inclusive, diverse and representative of the Old Fort community as well as the employees. Board members will be announced soon.
Terms of the sale, price, and the identity of the new local investors are not being disclosed at this time. Kitsbow Apparel, PBC will continue to do business under the brand name Kitsbow Cycling Apparel.
