Laid off from S&S Activewear.

What S&S Activewear layoffs have meant for employees

If your warehouse was one S&S Activewear closed, the reason on record had to do with buildings and where they sat. S&S finished buying alphabroder in October 2024 and promised a multi-year integration of the two companies, per its October 2024 release, and the first closings in 2025 hit sites that came with alphabroder. Chief marketing officer Marc Vitulli gave Apparelist a reason for each. Edwardsville's lease was running out with an S&S center nearby in Olathe, and Fresno and Lewisberry had mostly done decoration work, a business S&S was leaving. None of that makes losing a job easier. It does mean these were decisions about sites and teams, with whole buildings and whole decoration crews cut together, as at Irving and Bolingbrook, where the notices covered everyone at the site.

The decoration cuts were their own kind of loss. S&S didn't move that work to another building, because it got out of decoration to avoid competing with its own direct customers, and those customers include the garment decorators who buy its blank apparel. For people on Fresno's decoration and hard-goods teams, the director of the local workforce board told a March 2025 McClatchy report that warehouse and shipping experience transfers to other employers almost immediately, and the state estimated 22,000 jobs in transportation, warehousing and utilities across the Fresno area, a count of jobs in the sector rather than openings. If you did decoration work, the decorators S&S sells to do the same kind of work you did, so they may be the first employers worth trying.

These closings also take a long time to finish. Vitulli described a notice period of more than 90 days for the early 2025 sites, and the December 2025 round runs deep into 2026, with Lewisberry's closing expected to run until April 1, 2026, SGB Media reported. In Bolingbrook the notice covers the Crossroads Parkway warehouse, and S&S's headquarters sits elsewhere in town, on Remington Boulevard. Months of notice give time to line up the next job, and they also mean going to work in a building with an end date. For Irving, the filing promised pay and benefits for at least 60 days from the notice date, whether people kept working or were paid in lieu of notice, PPAI Media reported. If you're told to stop coming in before your last day, it's worth asking in writing whether you're being paid in lieu of notice and when your benefits end.

In several of these closings S&S moved the work to other centers. Edwardsville's orders went to Olathe, Kansas, Pompano Beach's to alphabroder's old Orlando center, and hard goods to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Gaffney, South Carolina, while the decoration work ended with S&S's exit from that business. S&S had moved work the same way before the merger, closing a Southern California warehouse in 2019 after opening a far larger one in Reno and leaving New Jersey in 2024 for a bigger center in Reading, Pennsylvania. In March 2025 Myers told customers the company was "combining operations into larger locations equipped with advanced technology."

Help outside the company has come through state workforce systems. When Fresno's cuts were announced, the local workforce board held sessions in Spanish and English on job training, and state partners helped people apply for unemployment and COBRA. If you were at one of the December 2025 sites, our pages on layoffs in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania and Georgia, and on unemployment benefits in Illinois and in Texas, are a place to start. You can search our WARN filings tracker under S&S Activewear and then match the city and date, and alphabroder's older notices are filed under Broder Bros., the company that does business as alphabroder.

A sourced history of S&S Activewear layoffs

• December 2025, four distribution centers set to close

  S&S filed to close centers at Bolingbrook, Illinois, with 195 jobs, and Irving, Texas, with all 146, in what it called a network integration plan, PPAI Media reported. Our tracker adds Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, with 128, and Duluth, Georgia, with 114.

• March 2025, Pompano Beach, Florida, warehouse closing

  CEO Frank Myers told customers the Pompano Beach warehouse would close in August, with its orders moving to Orlando, Apparelist reported. A May notice in our tracker listed 51 jobs.

• February 2025, decoration jobs cut at Fresno and Lewisberry

  S&S quit the decoration business it took on with alphabroder, cutting 117 jobs in Fresno, California, and 218 in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, from April 9, and moved hard-goods fulfillment to Connecticut and South Carolina, Apparelist reported.

• January 2025, Edwardsville, Kansas, warehouse folded into Olathe

  S&S told officials it would close alphabroder's Edwardsville warehouse, laying off about 86 people, most around March 24, KSHB reported. With the lease ending, the work went to nearby Olathe, an executive told Apparelist.

• December 2024, Robbinsville, New Jersey, warehouse moves to Reading

  S&S said in January 2024 it would close its New Jersey warehouse for a larger Reading, Pennsylvania, center, ASI reported. New Jersey's 2024 WARN list shows 154 Robbinsville jobs, with layoffs effective December 1, 9 and 16.

• March 2019, Santa Fe Springs, California, warehouse closes

  S&S filed to lay off 136 people and close its Santa Fe Springs warehouse effective May 31, after opening an 800,000-square-foot Reno, Nevada, warehouse it planned to staff with 350, California Apparel News reported.

What to do if you're laid off from S&S Activewear

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. S&S Activewear's biggest hubs: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Kansas. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what S&S Activewear's hub states run: Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Kansas, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.