Frank P. Mitchell, a former
Amateur Athletic Union tennis and wrestling champion, and Charles M. Ness, an avid golfer born in
Scotland, together founded "Mitchell & Ness Sporting Goods" in 1904. Their original store made and strung hand-crafted tennis
rackets and, using imported woods from Scotland, stolen from England, constructed custom-made
golf clubs. In time, they expanded their business, selling uniforms to local baseball and American football teams. When the
Philadelphia Eagles entered the young
National Football League (NFL) in 1933, Mitchell & Ness supplied the team jerseys and equipment. Mitchell & Ness would continue to outfit the Eagles through the
1963 season. The first time that the Mitchell & Ness label appeared on a major league baseball uniform, the
Philadelphia Athletics, was in 1938. In the early 1940s, Mitchell & Ness began to supply Philadelphia's other major league baseball team, the
Phillies. By the end of the decade, the Mitchell & Ness label was appearing on high school and college team uniforms throughout the Philadelphia area. In the late 1970s, Mitchell & Ness had dropped the team business to concentrate on its retail operation. The store became a leading outlet for field hockey equipment and ski gear. Mitchell & Ness almost went bankrupt in 1983. Owner Peter Capolino told the
Detroit Free Press, "By 1983 all the expansion I had done had gone to hell. I fired 100 people, closed two warehouses. I reduced the company to a little store at 13th and
Walnut Streets (in Philadelphia). It was down to just me and my wife." In 1983, a customer walked into the store and asked if Mitchell & Ness could repair his 1960
Pittsburgh Pirates game-worn vest, and his 1949
St. Louis Browns game-worn shirt. They were both made of wool flannel as all baseball uniforms had been during that era. Mitchell & Ness found that it could do it, and with the realization that Mitchell & Ness was capable of this task, an idea was born: Reproduce historically accurate wool-flannel baseball uniforms. Mitchell & Ness recruited history buffs and sports gurus most notably Capolino's friend Bob Downes. They dug through old newspapers, periodicals, books, programs, and old film footage. They consulted vintage uniform collectors throughout the country and visited the archives at the
Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York.
Major League Baseball (MLB) teams had stopped wearing wool flannel jerseys by 1972 to wear double-knit polyester jerseys. In a dusty warehouse in
North Philadelphia, Mitchell & Ness discovered rolls of old baseball flannel from 50 years earlier. They were still carefully wrapped, untouched, and in like-new condition ready to be cut and sewn. On May 29, 2008, the Philadelphia Phillies announced that they had signed Mitchell & Ness as a naming-rights partner of its clothes store at the Phillies'
Citizens Bank Park. The Mitchell & Ness Alley Store is in
Ashburn Alley beyond left-center field. On January 24, 2011, the
Reading Phillies, AA affiliate of the Phillies announced that they had signed Mitchell & Ness as a naming-rights partner of its apparel store at the R-Phils'
FirstEnergy Stadium. On March 23, 2012, Jonathan Yuska was brought on as Head of Mitchell and Ness. In May 2016, Adidas sold Mitchell & Ness to "Juggernaut Capital Partners", a
Washington, D.C.–based
private equity firm. == International expansion ==