Spreadshirt’s Hempfield custom clothing factory to close

Julia Maruca
Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 1:00 p.m. | Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 1:00 p.m.

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Julia Maruca | Tribune-Review

Spreadshirt will shut down its Hempfield facility later this year. Production has already ceased at the location.

Julia Maruca | Tribune-Review

Spreadshirt will shut down its Hempfield facility later this year. Production has already ceased at the location.

A Hempfield location for the custom clothing company Spreadshirt will close and lay off workers this year, according to a state Department of Labor and Industry filing.

The printing factory and office at 1572 Roseytown Road was scheduled to lay off 49 employees Monday. An additional 15 employees are scheduled to be laid off by the end of July. A hundred employees in total were employed at the facility.

Zach Coss, director of operations for the North American Spreadshirt sites, confirmed the facility is closing and said production has stopped at the Hempfield location. The company will move out of the buildings by the end of July.

Spreadshirt is a brand under Spread Group, which also operates the online shop system Spreadshop, the service platform Mula and the custom teamwear company TeamShirts.

The cotton apparel print-on-demand company, founded in 2002 in Leipzig, Germany, opened the Hempfield plant in 2005. In 2019, Spreadshirt announced it planned to install $10 million in new printing equipment at all of its American and European production facilities. Another production facility is in Nevada.

The Spreadshirt company specializes in custom T-shirt prints but also offers sweatshirts, aprons, hoodies and mugs with the customer’s designs.

Eike Adler, director of corporate communication for the parent company Spread Group, said the step to close the Hempfield location was “very difficult.”

The U.S. headquarters, which holds 36 employees in the customer service, finance, supply chain and North American Spreadshop teams, will remain in the greater Greensburg area, Adler said. The equipment from the facility in Hempfield will go to the production facility in Nevada to “scale up production volume” there.

The company still considers the U.S. a “top market,” Adler added in a statement.

“In the North American market as a whole, we will initially concentrate on sharpening our corporate strategy and then growing our activities in the long term, “she said. “Our North American business remains a very important part of our international activities.”