Pennant Fever
EXAMINING 20th CENTURY FELT NOVELTY COMPANIES AND THEIR PRODUCTS
Founded: 1980 Closed: 1993 (sold by founding partners to Fruit of the Loom); absorbed into “Pro Player Apparel” brand until 1999; then sold again to Perry Ellis and further licensed to United Legwear & Apparel through 2021. No more pennants made under the Salem mark after 1994-95 basketball season. Locations: 32 Haverhill Rd. in Salem, New Hampshire (ca. 1980s); then 1 Delaware Dr., Salem, NH (ca. late 1980s); with a secondary factory somewhere in Alabama d/b/a "Salem South" (ca. 1990s). Makers marks: Copyright footers bearing “Salem Screen Printers” (through 1991) or “WinCraft © Salem Screen Printers” (beginning in 1991) along the lower left corner on pennants; plus “Salem Sportswear” or “WinCraft” card headers affixed via staples. Intro If you grew up in the 1980s, like me, then the pennants for sale at ballparks, sporting goods stores, and other retailers during your childhood were quite forgettable. Most were logo-heavy, meaning that the only real artwork on them, if we can call it that, was the logo of the team itself—which the maker was licensed to use by the league or conference that controlled such property. This resulted in uniformly bland pennants made on cheap synthetic materials. Nothing at all like the pennants we saw pre-1969, when makers enjoyed more flexibility in expressing their creativity while making felt novelty items. Bor-rrring. [Enter Salem Screen Printers.] I know what you’re thinking: “C’mon, all the pennants made in the 1980s and 90s were garbage.” Sure, most were trash. And four years ago, when I started this BLOG, I would agree with you. But, I’ve thought about it some….
That’s kind of how I see 1980s-era pennants. Few pennant collectors today have anything positive to say about pennants from this era. But just wait a few years—you’re going to see more and more collectors do a 180 degree turn on this time frame. And, when they lower their upturned noses, they’re going see what I now see: a small collection of caricature pennants representing a blend of creative expression on a well-made product. And everyone's going to want them all over again! Above: Among all the sports stars Salem depicted on their products, nobody sold more than Michael Jordan. Genesis Salem Screen Printers was founded in 1980 by Kyle Nagel and Keith Kennelly. The two founders grew up together on the streets of Salem, New Hampshire. As children, they played sports together. By the late 1970s, they began looking for ways to make money. At first they turned to music; not sports. Nagel and Kennelly identified a need. In those days, if you wanted to buy a t-shirt from your favorite band, you had to mail order it from Rolling Stone magazine. That was pretty much your only option. Kennelly correctly spotted a niche market ready for exploitation. Accordingly, they entered the apparel business and began producing bootlegged rock’n roll t-shirts.
Foray into sports caricatures Bill Fickett was a partner at FHM Sportsgroup in the mid-1980s. Apparently, Fickett himself pioneered the idea of drawing a sports figure in caricature and printing said image on a t-shirt. His first shirt, in fact, was a caricature of Larry Bird (who else?) entitled, “The Massachusetts State Bird.” Fickett himself drew up the caricature of Mr. Bird. For reasons I can hardly fathom, the shirt was a hit. In fact, the shirt was so successful, FHM was awarded a “premium license” from the National Basketball Player’s Association (NBPA) to manufacture additional shirts using NBA players’ likeness.
Due to the Burger King promotion, Salem’s shirts spread like wildfire throughout new England. So they kept designing and printing new shirts that steadily began encroaching on the limits of their NBPA license. Eventually, executives at NBA headquarters in New York caught wind of the shirts. They soon realized this obscure manufacturer from New Hampshire was not licensed to use their intellectual property. You might think this is the part in our story where Salem received a cease-and-desist letter from the league’s General Counsel; but, actually no, quite the opposite. It seems then-Commissioner David Stern really liked the shirts! More importantly, Stern saw an opportunity in them to help grow the game of basketball. Instead of focusing on his league’s teams, Stern set out to focus on its individual talent. In addition to being fresh, caricature t-shirts with comedic images of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Isiah Thomas on them helped young fans really connect with the game’s biggest stars. So, during the 1985-86 basketball season, with the hometown Celtics on the verge of yet another title, Stern offered Salem an NBA license. With one phone call, Salem was now free to make “officially licensed” caricature shirts, pennants, whatever for any of the league’s 300+ players using their respective team names and logos--which the league (not the NBPA) controlled.
Above: Test prints of Salem's 1986 "WORLD CHAMPS" t-shirt, in production. Below: Kyle Nagel (left) and Keith Kennelly (middle) seen hawking the finished product in the streets of Boston following the Celtics' 16th championship in the summer of 1986. Sources: @salem_screen_printers. As their products became increasingly popular with fans, Salem received licenses from MLB, NHL, and the NFL; and similar items celebrating their leagues' players would soon follow. Art department As I noted earlier, Salem’s products stood out because they incorporated original artwork in each of them. By the mid-1980s, none of their competitors were making athletic apparel with anything like it. If we’re being completely honest, at first, the artwork wasn’t even that good—a testament to how starved the marketplace was for anything remotely creative. By the late 1980s, Salem employed a stable of leading artists that helped them turn out caricature shirts for each NBA team’s three biggest stars. The original lead artist behind their early caricature shirts was Larry Johnson, a cartoonist from the Boston Globe. Eventually, Salem had to part ways with Johnson. First, although his drawings were fine; they didn’t translate very well when reproduced via the screen printing method because he primarily drew in pencil. Second, Johnson was compensated via a royalty agreement tied to every shirt sold. As the company’s sales exploded, so did the costs of Johnson’s services. Salem decided they could do better with local artists.
One thing you will note about Stark's illustrations concerns shading. His artwork wasn't just colored beautifully; he was able to incorporate shading using slight variations in color that added to the realism of his portraits. Additionally, his artistic style translated extremely well during the screen printing process. As a result, Salem's shirts and pennants bearing his artwork featured exceptionally crisp detail amidst a bright color palette. If you didn't know better, you would think you were handling an original water color painting. As far as I'm concerned, Bruce Stark's artwork on anything is worth looking at. But, when printed on a pennant...? I say, "Stop drilling--you've hit oil!" Pennants Enough about shirts. Although Salem was best known for their t-shirts, they did dabble in other non-apparel products; namely felt pennants and decals shaped like pennants. Caps, too. As this is a pennant website, we’ll focus on their pennants from hereon. Above: Excerpt from a ca. 1989 Salem catalog proudly displaying their new pennant line. Source: @salem_screen_printers. It appears that Salem’s first pennants commemorated NBA and MLB teams and players; and they first hit the market around 1988 or so. Generally, Salem offered two pennant styles. The first was an individual player pennant. By far, these were most common. Depending on the team, Salem offered 1-3 players therefrom. Regardless of the sport, all featured the same standard design layout, from left to right: team name written vertically beside the spine; then the player’s caricature; next came the player’s name written in 3-D block lettering; followed by the team logo; and finally, the player’s number along the tail. This was a standardized recipe for success that served them well into the early 1990s. One especially nice touch warrants comment here: along with Salem’s standard individual player pennants, they also released a variant when that player hit a career milestone. Here’s a few of these variants that come to my mind, along with their more common mate: Above: On the left appear select individual player pennants for all star baseball players, ca. 1989. On the right, their pennants were updated to commemorate that player's career milestones, e.g., Rickey Henderson's 939th stolen base. Borrowing from the success of their t-shirts, Salem also produced a world champs pennant commemorating, well … teams that won championships—what else? These were basically a pennant version of Salem’s world champ t-shirts, which were not only uber popular with fans; but players, too. As with the shirts, these pennants featured a dozen or so players, coaches, and staff drawn in caricature together, along with any championship hardware they may have recently won. Unlike the individual player pennants, some of these pennants were made in more limited runs and are more difficult to find these days. All pennants, regardless of the style, were manufactured the same way. To streamline production, each measured a standard full size at roughly 12” x 30.” Additionally, all were printed on stiff, synthetic felt that was one color: white. This combination lowered production costs, sped up the manufacturing process, and eliminated the need to stock multiple colors of felt. And, a lighter colored felt substrate permitted “wet on wet” screen printing, which was a huge plus for Salem because it meant you could print with multiple colors at a time—that is, without having to wait for each color to fully dry. Through 1990 or so, it seems Salem manufactured its own pennants—along with their t-shirts and apparel. Not only do these pennants bear the name “Salem Screen Printers” on the pennant itself; they also were sold with a card header bearing the “Salem Sportswear” name and logo. Sometime in 1990, however, it looks like this changed. Beginning in 1990, many of the same Salem pennants were sold with a WinCraft card header affixed to it that read: “Made in U.S.A. by WinCraft, Winona, MN 55987.” This fact notwithstanding, many still bore the “Salem Screen Printers” name on the pennant itself. By 1991, however, Salem’s pennants were being sold with the same WinCraft card header; but now the pennants read, “WinCraft © Salem Screen Printers.” Above: Here's a 1990-dated Rickey Henderson pennant. By the looks of it, it appears to be by Salem; but, the card header bears the WinCraft mark; and it says the product was made in Winona, MN where Wincraft is located--not Salem, NH. Below: Upon closer inspection, the pennant bears the name "Salem Screen Printers." No mention of WinCraft. Confusing, right? If I had to guess, I suspect Salem simply began outsourcing production of their pennants to WinCraft in the early 1990s. They may have done this so they could focus on their apparel lines, which were far more lucrative than their pennant lines. Additionally, WinCraft was then (and is now) the largest maker of pennants, so the Minnesota-based company probably could manufacture Salem’s pennants faster, cheaper, and with the same or better degree of quality. Regardless of who actually made these pennants, the design—really, the artwork behind the design—was apparently supplied by Salem and usually featured one of their familiar artist’s work/signature, such as “MUDGE” (Allen Mudgett) or “Stark” (Bruce Stark). The end In 1993, Salem founders Kyle Nagel and Keith Kennelly saw the writing on the wall. Times were a changing in the sports apparel business; and they knew it. In the mid-1980s, Salem was the only company making licensed sportswear of this kind. Five years later, that was no longer true. The marketplace for clever sports apparel focused on the individual player had become crowded. Every league was now trying to make more money than the previous year. They accomplished this by giving out more and more licenses. By the early 1990s, the leagues had over licensed their property. In the end, this hurt the established licensees, as they had more competition to deal with than ever before. Companies like Starter and Trench experienced financial troubles and eventually went out of business. So, just before the bubble burst on licensed sportswear, Nagel and Kennelly went public with their company and Salem was purchased by Fruit of the Loom for a whopping $136.4M. Salem was then integrated with Fruit of the Loom’s sports apparel business, Pro Player Apparel, and its product lines. But in 1999, Fruit of the Loom went bankrupt; and Pro Player was purchased by Perry Ellis. Last I read, Pro Player Apparel was being sold at Dollar Stores…. But don’t feel bad for Salem’s founders. They came out just fine.
*** So that’s the story of Salem Screen Printers. If you managed to read this far, I can only hope this post caused you to re-examine your view of 1980s-era pennants; or, at the very least, caricature pennants produced during this era. It’s my observation that collectors of vintage pennants most admire those pieces representing a blend of artistic expression on a well-made product. Salem’s pennants did just that, thanks to a stable of all star artists, and a dedicated team of employees that translated their artwork from paper to fabric via the screen printing method. Essentially, they employed the same process from start to finish as their predecessors had, decades earlier. But there’s a third factor behind all vintage pennants…. I’ll call it the “X” factor. The “X” factor is this: the degree to which a product connects the consumer to their childhood. Obviously, this characteristic is highly personalized to each collector. For me, I grew up in the 1980s; and in southern California. I distinctly remember those Salem t-shirts and pennants. They were everywhere. Researching this very post brought back a flood of wonderful memories: Magic Johnson and the “Showtime” Lakers of the 1980s; the heroics of Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson in 1988, to name a few. Salem’s wonderful illustrations of my childhood heroes will always warm my heart. For collectors my age, their pennants will always have that “X” factor for us. GalleryLos Angeles Dodgers Los Angeles Lakers Los Angeles Raiders Detroit Pistons Oakland Athletics San Francisco Giants Chicago Bulls Chicago Cubs New York Mets New York Yankees Minnesota Twins Boston Celtics Boston Red Sox Sources Rolling Stone's, "Big Heads, Bad Boys and Bird: How Salem Sportswear Changed the Game Forever," by Pete Croatto, May 13, 2016. Available online here. ThePostGame's, "How Athlete Caricatures Exploded Into Multi-Million Dollar Merchandise Business," by Jeff Fedotin, September 30, 2019. Available online here. The Screen Team (Instagram @salem_screen_printers). Follow them here. Related content For a look at my Salem-inspired Clayton Kershaw caricature pennant, click here. For a look at my Salem-inspired 2022 Golden State Warriors caricature pennant, click here. Note: All unquoted material on these pages is © 2022 K.R. Biebesheimer & Son. All rights reserved. Short excerpts may be used after written permission obtained and proper credit is given. ♦♦
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About me...I collect vintage pennants and banners. Soon after getting into this hobby, I became curious about the companies responsible for their production. I had to look hard, but eventually found a lot of interesting information on many of them, and their products. This site is my repository for that research. Periodically, I will dedicate a post to one of these featured manufacturers. I hope other collectors will find this information useful. Featured Content:
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