What do Nicole Kidman, Dak Prescott, Morgan Freeman and Greg Sankey all have in common?
If you answered they are all wealthy, that is true. But more interestingly, they all enjoy the same custom jeans brand.
Blue Delta Jeans, a Mississippi-based bespoke denim jeans company, has taken over the Southeastern Conference as the unofficial jeans of the SEC elite.
Sankey, the SEC commissioner, says he owns at least 10 pairs.
Laura Rutledge, a rising star at ESPN, has been on board since the beginning.
Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian, Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin and Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari are among the many who enjoy Blue Delta pants. So, too, does country music star and Tennessee fan Morgan Wallen.
The jeans, which retail for $450 a pair, are immaculate, making you feel like you've never looked better regardless of your body type. Blue Delta takes up to 16 measurements -- waist, butt, calf, etc. -- so that each unique pair meets its mantra of "One size fits one." It's been a big part of the company's success that 6-foot-7 Yankees slugger Aaron Judge can feel just as good wearing Blue Delta Jeans as 5-foot-7 USC basketball coach Eric Musselman, who discovered them while at Arkansas.
"I'm tall and lanky, so it's hard for me to ever fit into blue jeans, and that's why I don't traditionally wear them," says SEC Network's Peter Burns. "Whenever I went down there and they fitted me, sure enough, OK I finally found it's custom fit for me."
Says Rutledge, "I think that's the beauty of it. They're so varied in how they can cater to each individual and each different style."
Nick Weaver and Josh West describe themselves as sons of makers who are big dreamers. Weaver's father made tires, and West's dad was a welder. They made money differently before West had the idea to get into the custom jeans business.
Weaver initially doubted West knew what he was doing. "Are you sure someone isn't already doing this?" he asked.
When West looked into it more, the answer he found was no, and, most importantly, the pair might even have an advantage in launching a company out of north Mississippi. West was going in and out of factories in the Tupelo area then and believed there was a natural resource of available skilled sewists just waiting to be properly harnessed.
"There's very few places that still have that level of talent that we have," says West, the company's chief executive officer. "We have the best sewing talent in the country."
In a "Field of Dreams" build it and they will come mantra, the pair believed if they could make good enough jeans, the client base would come.
But before the hoi polloi of the SEC started proudly wearing their jeans, Weaver and West had to fight and claw their way to survival. The business, launched in 2011, lost money for years. For a while, they could only afford for Weaver to do it full-time while West moonlighted after finishing his day job responsibilities. They were starting successful businesses and selling them to prop up their money-thirsty custom jeans business. For five years, they spent every Christmas Eve at a customer's house somewhere because they needed the sales to make payroll.
"Our first year, we literally drove shuttle vans and bused people to Ole Miss football games to help make payroll," says Weaver, the company's chief operating officer. "We've cleaned carpets."
And then there was the price point. A Mississippi jeans company selling nearly $500 jeans?! Even its founders were initially skeptical that people would pay that much when Tom James, a high-end men's clothing company, started carrying the jeans at that price point.
An early break came when Matt Kuhn, a colleague of West's and a former Ole Miss center, offered to make an introduction to Ole Miss great Eli Manning.
"At the time, we really had no business fitting Eli Manning," West says. "We were making these in a junkyard."
But when Manning, who won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants, later told them he wanted a pair in every color they made, Weaver and West knew they were onto something.
The excitable Weaver, who has a stutter but hasn't let it slow him down one iota, and more laidback West made the perfect pair, teaming up to pursue every lead to realize their dream. A genuineness to both makes you want to gravitate toward them, which became part of Blue Delta's secret sauce. Not only were the pants great, but the company founders were two likable, down-home guys who wanted to build a sustainable product out of Mississippi. They were always willing to jump in a car or on a long flight to measure clients to get the fit right personally. And, if it wasn't exactly to the customer's demands, fly back out to try it again. They embodied the American Dream.
"Honestly, it's their story," says Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork, who met them at Ole Miss. "It's Nick's personality; it's the fact that he embraces who he is. The stuttering part, he doesn't mind people talking about that. When he gets going and he starts stuttering, it just makes him connect with people in a very unique way."
Utilizing connections and word-of-mouth was critical early on for the company. There wasn't money early on for marketing and advertising, but having celebrity athletes unofficially endorse the product as quality to friends and teammates spurred curiosity and, later, sales.
Andy Kennedy, then-Ole Miss' basketball coach, was a big early proponent of the jeans. When Blue Delta opened a showroom in Oxford just off the Square, Kennedy personally directed visiting SEC coaches and media personalities to the store. Over time, SEC Network personalities like Burns, Rutledge, Paul Finebaum and Marcus Spears, among others, got personally fitted and set up with custom jeans.
"I remember thinking I can't believe anyone would want to make custom jeans for me, like, it's so cool," Rutledge says. "(Nick) came to Charlotte and measured me in Charlotte because I was working for SEC Network. The care that they took to make sure that they were perfect and I loved everything he was about and loved the idea of the company. Man, this is something I'm honored to be involved with."
Burns, who admits he spends a lot of time on social media, started seeing more and more discussion about Blue Delta in 2017. After visiting the Oxford showroom, he became a quick convert and started wearing them everywhere, including frequently on SEC Network sets.
At one point, he says, Sankey approached him and asked about the jeans. Burns gave Sankey the hard sell on how amazing they were but then felt a bit of panic afterward. "I'm telling the most powerful man in college athletics to get these jeans," he says.
He noticed Sankey adding Blue Delta jeans to his collection over time and saw the SEC commissioner wearing a pair at the College World Series. Sankey told him, "This is all I wear now."
"He doesn't come to me for many pieces of advice, but finally, I proved some value to Commissioner Sankey," Burns says.
Sankey credits Kennedy, now UAB's head coach, as his entry point to Blue Delta (sorry, Peter) but it didn't take him long to get hooked. Sankey was aware of an urban legend to freeze the pants rather than washing them -- Weaver likes to say "wear often, wash little" and says never to wash them at home -- and put the trick to test during one unexpected 10-day road trip in 2018 where he only had one pair of Blue Delta jeans packed. The freezer trick worked, and no one was any wiser about how often Sankey wore them.
"That's probably where I became much more loyal because it worked," Sankey says. "They fit great; they're comfortable."
Sankey couldn't get enough as the company expanded its offerings to chinos and performance pants. He picked up multiple colors, careful not to pick certain ones that could offend one of his conference's fanbases if he wore them in public. He can't get enough of the chino line that now comes in 17 colors, from tan to turquoise. "The Jhino stuff, that's like butter," the SEC commissioner says. "Those are just comfortable."
In the past, Sankey has even bought all the conference's athletic directors a pair for Christmas, according to Weaver, and this past Christmas Sankey tweeted a photo with the caption, "It's always a good day when a package from @bluedeltajeans arrives!" Those athletic directors, including Bjork and Arkansas' Hunter Yurachek, then introduced the pants to their school's top donors. After Blue Delta became a Texas A&M athletics sponsor, Bjork, then the school's athletic director, brought them to a 12th Man Foundation meeting and let the company set up a fitting room. In his time in College Station, Bjork saw a jean he first discovered in Oxford become more and more commonplace among his athletic department's top benefactors.
"When I went to A&M, Nick got me a pair of maroon Blue Deltas," Bjork says. "And it's like, 'Hey, where'd you get those?' You know what, I've got a guy and they'll get you connected. People are wearing them, donors are wearing them."
Blue Delta recently announced a $1.5 million expansion of its facility in north Mississippi, with a goal of producing one million pants in the next decade. What started as a company that could only make five pairs of jeans weekly can now do upwards of 200 daily. They've landed partnerships with the Ryder Cup and the Kentucky Derby to create special jeans for both events, outfitting the United States' Ryder Cup team last year and planning to do again in 2025. If you look hard enough, you'll see them at SEC football games and premier SEC events like the conference's annual spring meetings in Destin doing custom fittings.
In addition to pants, they've added a few extra accessories like belts and hats but are very intent on protecting the brand rather than evolving into something that loses the heart of what made it great in the first place. They'd rather remain obsessed with constantly trying to improve the jeans in a never-ending pursuit of perfection. You can feel noticeable differences in the earliest pairs of jeans Blue Delta produced compared to now, but their devoted customers will tell you they love every version they've come up with. Once you know what you're looking for, you can immediately tell when someone is wearing Blue Deltas, even without seeing the little white tag on the back.
"Whenever you see someone else you admire or respect in the industry who does it as well you're like OK we're part of this unique group," Burns says, "This Blue Delta Jeans fraternity."
It's why Sankey and others keep coming back to a small Mississippi company any time they need a new pair of pants. And how what was once a concern -- the hefty price tag -- has now become part of its DNA.
"We're trying to make the best damn pants in the world," Weaver says. "How much did you think that was going to cost?"
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