Right.

Dickies and Vans were and are both units of VF Corporation.[1][2] VF also owns The North Face and Timberland, and a bunch of other "lifestyle brands". They have headquarters all over the place. VF corporate HQ is Denver. Vans HQ is in Costa Mesa, CA. There's a HQ in Shanghai, which manages manufacturing. Timberland HQ is in New Hampshire. North Face HQ is in Denver. And for some reason, there's an IT unit in Greensboro, NC.

Too many HQs. Looks from their job listings like they're consolidating apparel in Costa Mesa, except for North Face and Timberland.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VF_Corporation

[2] https://www.vfc.com/

Despite the fact that they manufacture work-wear, I'd hazard to guess that most of the "innovation" - like with any other apparel type - is in taste-making and branding rather than any improvement in work-wear materials or functionality, and the talent pool for taste-making is likely much stronger in Southern California than Forth Worth, TX.

The consolidation probably means they'll just add most of the Dickies brand workload to the existing employees in Southern California rather than hire/transfer 120 workers there. So a net reduction in labor costs and elimination of real estate costs, despite moving to a higher CoL area.

Yeah, nothing to see here. Just your run of the mill corporate consolidation. I used to live a few miles from that Vans HQ right off the 405.