$87.7 Million of Army Trousers, One Tennessee Sewing Floor

Omega Apparel sewed Army trousers and women's slacks out of two buildings near downtown Smithville, Tennessee, and then it stopped.

Its last federal award action is dated Nov. 25, 2019.

Eighty-one days later a company called 620 Pelham, Inc. signed a DLA trouser contract of its own and started the same floor back up.

That first one was SPE1C120D1245, signed Feb. 14, 2020: a $1,969,720 ceiling, one year, one offer received, no set-aside.

One order emptied it.

On Sept. 24 the same contracting office announced them a follow-on worth $87,699,684.

What the Old Ceiling Told You

The new award is SPE1C1-26-D-0088, a firm-fixed-price IDIQ for Army Green Service Uniform men's trousers and Military D.C. men's trousers, five years with no option periods, ordering period ending Sept. 23, 2031. Four responses came in.

The vehicle it succeeds is SPE1C121D1470, signed May 2021: $28,296,000, a total small business set-aside, four offers, last date to order May 4, 2026.

Here is the part worth keeping. Across 47 FPDS actions, DLA Troop Support ordered $25,485,173 against that $28.3 million ceiling.

That is 90.1% consumed, on a vehicle that ran its full five years and expired four months before the follow-on landed.

So the office wrote the next one at 3.1 times the size (chart above).

"How much of the incumbent's ceiling got used, and what does that tell you about the size of the follow-on?"

Ceiling utilization is one of the cheaper reads in the public record and almost nobody prices off it.

An incumbent sitting at 30% of ceiling tells you the requirement underdelivered and the recompete will be written small or not at all. An incumbent at 90% with the clock running out tells you the office is about to buy a bigger box.

Both numbers come from the same two queries you already know how to run.

Three Awards, One Board

620 Pelham was not the only sewing shop on the Sept. 24 board. DLA Troop Support announced the Army's service uniform in three pieces that day:

Gil Sewing Corp., Morton Grove, Illinois: $123,651,595 for men's and women's dress coats, five years, three responses.
620 Pelham, Inc., Smithville, Tennessee: $87,699,684 for trousers, five years, four responses.
Bethel Yuut LLC, Anchorage, Alaska: $9,982,440 for men's all-weather coats, an 18-month fixed-quantity buy, two responses.

$221,333,719 across the three, all of it to small businesses, and nine bidders between them (chart below).

Nine, on the uniform every soldier in the Army will have to own.

The demand side of that is not a mystery. Army.mil puts mandatory possession of the AGSU at Oct. 1, 2027, with the current Army Service Uniform carrying a wear-out date of Sept. 30, 2027.

That date falls 373 days into a 1,826-day ordering period. The peak of the buy sits in year two of a contract signed this week.

The Supply Side Is the Whole Story

Look at what 620 Pelham actually is, on the record.

USAspending carries 105 prime contract records for the company, $31,083,256.87 all in, every one of them DLA Troop Support, every one of them men's trousers or women's slacks. No other agency. No other product line.

The single ceiling announced on Sept. 24 is 2.8 times that entire six-year book.

A company with one customer and two products carries a nine-figure vehicle on exactly one asset: a floor, a line, and operators who can sew the garment to spec at rate. That is the scarce thing in this market, and 620 Pelham rebuilt it inside a plant that had gone dark.

When the company took over the Smithville buildings, a consultant brought in on the transition told WJLE, the local station, what the buying side had told him: the department had "real difficulties because companies like Omega have gone out of business causing their supply chain to shrink."

One of those floors came back, and six years later the requirement it serves is three times the size. Those two facts are the whole award.

Final Thoughts

Two things are true about this award and they pull in opposite directions.

A five-year, $87.7 million ceiling on a uniform with a hard mandatory-possession date is about as good as a small manufacturer's pipeline gets. And a program that clears its entire apparel requirement on three competitions drawing nine bidders is a thin market, whatever the dollar figures look like.

If you want the actionable version, it is sitting at the same office.

620 Pelham's women's slacks vehicle, SPE1C124D0017, stops taking orders on Nov. 13, 2026, which is 49 days out. Its $6,194,913.56 ceiling is 58.6% consumed.

Apply the read above and you get a smaller follow-on than the trouser one, on a requirement that drew three offers last time.

Recompetes in this corner of DoD are decided by who still has a floor and a trained line. That is a shorter list every year, and it is checkable.

Thanks for reading.