K2 has stifled the speculation about which apparel company it will acquire by purchasing Ex Officio from Orvis for an undisclosed sum. Richard Heckman, K2’s Chairperson & CEO, told The B.O.S.S. Report’s sister publication, Sports Executive Weekly, that his company has been in the market for both a shoe and an apparel company for some time now. “We will buy a footwear company, and we’ll buy an apparel company,” Heckman said. “We’ll get somebody who has a good infrastructure and scale it. It’s more of a service play than a brand play. We don’t need a brand.”

With the Ex Officio acquisition, K2 is buying an infrastructure to produce apparel for the company’s entire brand portfolio. K2’s CFO, Dudley Mendenhall told a local paper that Ex Officio will eventually make clothing for K2’s other brands. Rick Hemmerling, founder of Ex Officio, told a local paper that Orvis was more focused on the retail side of their business, while he was trying to grow wholesale distribution. Under K2, the brand should see a more unified strategy.

K2 said that Hemmerling would stay with the company as head of Ex Officio, which will remain in Tukwila, WA