The pennant, as defined in the Oxford dictionary, is “a flag denoting a sports championship or other achievement.” It is also defined as “a tapering flag on a ship, especially one flown at the mast head of a vessel in commission.”  The earliest sports pennants sprang up on college campuses in the 1880’s and 1890’s.  They first started as small flags waved by spectators and fans of a particular college team.  The earliest examples had several pieces of felt sewn together with lettering that was also sewn on, depicting the name of the school.  

Pennant production was a very nascent industry when George A. Trench decided to enter the business.  After emigrating from Canada to Buffalo, Trench founded his own company in 1920.  He was born in Dickinson’s Landing, Ontario, on October 6, 1891. The town no longer exists, as it is one of the “Lost Villages of Canada” that was intentionally flooded during the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958 enabling the expansion of the river.  Trench spent his childhood years in Dickinson’s Landing and moved to Buffalo in search of an opportunity.

His company, Trench Manufacturing Co., Inc., was officially granted a charter by the secretary of state of New York on October 14, 1921. The charter description of his business was “to manufacture pennants, flags and souvenirs.” Aside from Trench himself, the directors of the company were Charles E. Duncan, a childhood friend from Dickinson Landing, and Jacob L. Glass.  The trio invested $20,000 to finance the company, with George serving as president.

As baseball became the most popular sport in America in the 1930s, Trench saw an opportunity for his company.  Making inroads with the baseball clubs, by the end of the 1930s the company was making pennants for many of the 16 American and National League teams.   

As their need for manufacturing capacity increased, Trench and his colleagues were forced to move their operation, setting up shop in a building at 25 Huron Street.  They occupied that building from 1929 through the early 1940s when further expansion resulted in a move to 1233 Main Street.   

In the early years, Trench did not put a maker’s mark on their pennants.  A maker’s mark identifies the manufacturer of the product.  But as their reputation and market share grew, they began to mark their pennants, either in the lower left corner on the front, or they would identify the company name on the back. Trench’s makers marks varied over the years but were distinctive as the brand continued to grow in awareness and stature across the country. 

Continuing to secure their market in the sports community, George developed a relationship with another Buffalo company, a stadium concessionaire called Sportservice, to enable the company to sell pennants inside the stadiums of major league baseball teams.  The concessionaires controlled the products that were sold within the ballparks.  This was a brilliant move by Trench, as over the next several years Sportservice became the concessionaire in 10 of the 16 major league ballparks and Trench became the exclusive pennant provider in those stadiums. Having their product in the concession stands inside the ballparks gave them a distinct competitive advantage as well as a captive audience to buy their products.

Sportservice’s roots date back to 1915, when Louis Jacobs, along with his brothers Marvin and Charles, started selling peanuts and popcorn at local theaters in Buffalo. They created Sportservice in 1926, following the success they were experiencing. The Jacobs brothers soon expanded their business to include concessions at major league sports venues, gaining their first contract with the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field in 1930.  Today known as Delaware North – it is one of the largest and most successful hospitality and food service businesses in the world. Delaware North is headquartered in downtown Buffalo and is still owned and operated by the Jacobs family.

Sportservice contracted with Trench because of their reputation for producing high quality products, and because they were confident that Trench products would sell well and enhance their reputation.  In addition, Trench was bringing innovations to the market.  They created what was known as a “stadium pennant.”  These very unique pennants featured a colorful artist rendering of the team’s ballpark with the team logo or mascot superimposed over the rendering or above it, on the left side of the pennant.  The name of the team was to the right of the rendering.  These were very popular pennants. Another key innovation, and one that made products such as this possible, was the employment of artists in a special department within the organization to provide high quality and artistic designs for their products.  Before Trench, pennants were pretty boring with just a name of the team or organization.  Trench brought creative designs including colorful cartoons, team mascots, stadium renderings, team logos and other unique vignettes to the product.

In the 1950’s, in conjunction with Sportservice, Trench put a hybrid maker’s mark on the pennant that was both their own and Sportservice’s.  This was unique in the industry at that time, as no other manufacturer had done anything like this. It showed the strong partnership between the two companies. 

As baseball became the country’s national past-time and its popularity continued to increase, Trench expanded to make pennants for all 16 major league baseball teams in the 1950’s.  Building on the success they had with Sportservice, they also developed partnerships with other concessionaires, ensuring their products would be in almost every stadium and arena as they began to dominate the market. 

George A. Trench led the company for over 35 years and during his tenure steered much of the innovation in the pennant industry.  He had created a firm with a very solid reputation and a market-leading position, however by 1958 he was 67 years old and looking to retire.  Later that year, he sold the company to Thomas W. Storm.  Sadly, after a short retirement, George A. Trench died on October 3, 1962, at the age of 71. He resided at 140 Linwood Avenue in Buffalo for many years with his wife Esther Dowe Trench.   Clearly George had done well with his company, as he left his widow with an estate valued at $495,775.15.

Meanwhile, Storm, a native of Lewiston, NY, who graduated from Princeton University in 1955, had big ideas for the company. Once the sale was finalized, he and his brother John immediately went to work to grow the company. As Trench Manufacturing was already well positioned with all the teams in Major League baseball, Storm looked to the National Football League to further expand the company’s market share. By the early 1960s, he was rewarded with a license agreement for the 14-club circuit.  By the middle of that decade, however, the professional leagues and teams determined there was value in their trademarks and logos, and thus began requiring manufacturers to secure license agreements and pay fees for their use.  The manufacturer was also required to portray the league logo on the pennant.  Again, Trench led the way in securing license agreements with the leagues.  After the NFL, the Storm’s company also pursued license agreements with the NBA and NHL.

In 1960, Trench Manufacturing introduced a “photo pennant,” which represented another innovation in the market.  This design included an 8- by 10-inch color team photograph inserted into the pennant, surrounded by colorful graphics and the team name to the right.  On the back, all the players in the photograph were printed by name.  These were produced for Major League baseball teams along with NFL and AFL clubs throughout the 1960s.

As business continued to grow, the company needed more manufacturing space and on April 27, 1961, they agreed to rent 25,000 square feet at 1298 Main Street.  This became their primary pennant manufacturing facility through 1993.  They continued the use of 1233 Main Street and over the years that location evolved to manufacture other sports novelties for the company.

By the mid-1960s, Trench Manufacturing was far and away the largest pennant manufacturer in the world and still positioned to grow, as they continued to add other leagues to their portfolio, These included the American Basketball Association, the World Football League, the World Hockey Association. As other leagues sprouted up throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Trench secured the requisite license agreement to feature their teams.  In addition, their agreement with the NHL meant expanding sales into Canada.  Thus, the company opened a small manufacturing facility there to meet the demand of the Canadian market.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the sports novelty market started to expand as leagues were learning that various types of products, including clothing with team logos, were popular with fans.  Trench jumped on that trend very early and expanded their offerings to include novelties such as t-shirts, hats, badges, bumper stickers, hockey pucks and foam fingers, among others. By the late 1970s, they had vastly expanded their licensed apparel offerings and it became their core business.

In addition to leading the field in product design and development, another innovation Trench brought to the marketplace involved their system of catalog ordering and fast product delivery. Their customer service and delivery were unsurpassed in the market. They created what they referred to as their TD Network—a nationwide network of local stocking distributors that inventoried Trench products. Through their many locations and the inventory held in each, the company could get product into the retailers’ hands much quicker than any of their competitors. To ensure the ability to scale their manufacturing capability up and down quickly to meet demand, Trench further expanded their space at 1298 Main Street to over 82,000 square feet.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Trench developed a relationship with another local Buffalo company, New Era Cap.  For several years, the company had been providing artwork and designs used on New Era’s baseball and other caps, a result of the outstanding reputation of their internal art department.  New Era was growing at the time, producing headwear for college sports, Triple A baseball leagues and the National Football League. They were also beginning to sell caps to sports fans. This was a good partnership for New Era as it gave them access to talented artistic and design people as they needed them, but without the permanent overhead.

Trench continued to expand its product portfolio and, by the late 1980s, had become the dominant force in the sports apparel and novelty market.  The apparel market had grown tremendously in the previous twenty years with Trench growing right along with it. And both would continue to grow exponentially over the next decade, as the company became better known for their apparel than for their bread and butter pennants.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Trench grew an average of 26 percent per year.  In a poll conducted by The Sporting Goods Dealer, the company was ranked as one of the top national brands in several product categories, including t-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts and collectibles.  In the late 1980s, Trench moved their 1233 Main Street operation to 2495 Main Street, where they did silk screening for their apparel.

Despite their market-leading position, competition was heating up and Trench was challenged to reduce production costs and increase profit margins.  They began to lessen the quality of the materials used in their products and it especially showed in their pennants.  Moving away from high quality wool and felt, they turned to synthetic materials that were much cheaper and easier to mass produce.  Pennants with painted on art designs gave way to mass produced designs that could be printed in high volume.  In addition, their designs became more common and they stopped differentiating designs between teams, except for the name and logo. In making these changes, Trench started to lose their competitive edge.

Nonetheless, business was still humming along until 1994. As a hometown manufacturer during the Buffalo Bills’ unprecedented run of four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s, business boomed.  They had four factory stores across Western New York that did exceptionally well, and also opened three other retail outlets in Ohio, Texas and Virginia.

On August 14, 1994, however, the Major League baseball players went on strike and the work stoppage continued through the post season, forcing the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904.  The players strike continued for 232 days until April 2, 1995, causing the 1995 season to be shortened to 144 games and creating an apathy among fans.  This work stoppage, along with the loss of the World Series, was a major blow to Trench as baseball was still the most significant revenue source.  What was more, the August beginning of the strike coincided with the pennant race leading into the postseason, the period that saw the greatest fan interest. That fan interest had traditionally led to significant spending on Trench products, and business typically spiked in September and October. They lost all that in 1994.

To compound the impact, the National Hockey league owners announced a lockout of the players on October 1, almost simultaneous with the would-be start of the baseball postseason.   This dealt a double blow to Trench’s business, with hockey fans being among the most ardent of all sports.

Not surprisingly, fan frustration caused by this double stoppage resulted in significantly less spending on sports apparel and novelties. Trench’s sales took a nosedive.  Though they had begun to scale back production in 1993, they still had significant inventory in their TD Network and across their seven retail factory stores.  The company’s overhead expenses were significant as they also employed over 235 people at the time.  

In response to these events, Trench needed an influx of cash and so sold off their novelty division, which produced pennants, pins, badges, bumper stickers and hockey pucks along with other sports trinkets.  These had been Trench’s signature products for most of the company’s history, especially the pennants.  The division was sold to Tandycrafts, Inc. of Fort Worth, TX, on September 19, 1994.  The sale impacted 34 employees—a few were offered jobs with the new company, some were offered jobs within Trench and most were let go. Tandycrafts brand for their novelty products at the time was Tag Express, though they continued to use the Trench brand for a couple of years after the sale. Now without their novelty line, Trench re-focused its efforts on licensed sports apparel, including t-shirts, sweatshirts and outerwear.  However, their apparel line did not differentiate from their competitors. 

As the slide continued, in early November Trench reached an agreement with their unionized employees of Local 49, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers for voluntary pay cuts of 10 percent.  Simultaneously, management agreed to 15 percent pay reductions as the company tried to manage a $10 million drop in sales.  The sales drop in baseball and hockey apparel also carried over to other sports as fans showed their displeasure, greatly impacting the lucrative Christmas holiday buying season. 

Trench barely made it through 1994 but generated very hopeful news on January 9, 1995, with an announcement they had reached a $50 million sports apparel deal with Gold’s Gym.  The deal included the manufacturing of t-shirts, shorts and workout apparel with the Gold’s Gym logo. The items would be sold at all Gold’s Gym locations across the country as well as many other retailers. After the deal was announced, Trench president and chief executive officer Gene Pease said, "It represents an important new direction for Trench and an important extension of our core business of manufacturing quality licensed apparel. We believe it will complement and enhance our sports business." Soon after the Gold’s Gym deal, the company announced a similar contract with Rollerblade for $45 million in sports apparel.

Despite the optimistic news, however, Trench was running low on cash to run the company. They came very close to selling to Signal Apparel Co. of Chattanooga, TN, in mid-February for $2.67 million, but the deal fell through at the last minute. On March 20, Trench signed a private/public investment deal aimed at keeping the troubled company afloat. The investment firm was not divulged but the deal also included commitments from the City of Buffalo, Erie County Industrial Development Agency and the State of New York. The infusion of cash was essential to keep the ailing company alive.

It did not last long, however.  On October 4, 1995, the company was forced into involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy as over 200 creditors filed suit seeking a total of $5.5 million. The company filed final bankruptcy papers in November, outlining a three phase “wind down liquidation.” The first phase was a deep price slashing of their wholesale and retail clothing lines in November and December. An auction of their machinery, equipment and art supplies at the Main Street headquarters followed in January 1996, with the final phase disposing of their licensing agreements, insignias and images of all the sports teams, Gold’s Gym and Rollerblade.

Thus, in a rapid decent, came the end of one of the iconic sports companies to call Buffalo home. Despite the inglorious end, for over 75 years Trench Manufacturing made a national name for itself as a dominant player in the pennant and sports apparel marketplace with its high quality and innovative products.