Division V — the state of the business

MV Sport (A2000 division V) is a healthy, high-volume decorated-apparel operation whose one soft spot is payroll. Top-line sales are large and steady (~$75–78M/yr), decoration — the value-add engine — holds its ground, and order volume is actually growing fast. But labor cost is rising against flat revenue, and the reason is structural: the business is running many more, much smaller orders for roughly the same dollars, and small orders are labor-intensive. This page lays out that case; the Payroll & orders page drills into who and where.

The one-line take. Sales slipped % from 2024 to 2025 while payroll rose +%, so labor's share of sales climbed from to . Everything else points to a healthy operation — the problem is concentrated in payroll.

The business at a glance

2026 is year-to-date (Jan–Jun) and not directly comparable to the full years above — the apparel year is seasonal, so half-year ratios read differently. 2024 and 2025 are complete.

Sales are steady — but payroll's share is climbing

The revenue line is essentially flat and large. What moves is the red line: payroll as a percentage of sales, which has drifted up as labor grew against softening revenue. That gap is the whole story.

Light bars = division-V sales; dark bars = total MV Sport payroll (the 8 corporate/non-MV-Sport people excluded). The line isolates payroll ÷ sales. 2026 YTD blends half-year payroll with half-year sales, so treat its point as indicative, not a trend continuation.

Why payroll is under pressure: more, smaller orders

Payroll didn't balloon from raises — it's order structure. Order count jumped from 2024 to 2025 while units barely moved, so the average order shrank from units (~$) to units (~$). Each order carries fixed handling labor — entry, art, picking, ticketing, packing, shipping — regardless of size. Twice as many small orders for the same revenue means substantially more labor per sales dollar.

Left: division-V order count (distinct orders placed). Right: average order value (sales ÷ orders). The two together — many more orders, each worth much less — are the mechanical driver of rising labor intensity. Units per order fell from to over the same span.

Decoration — the value engine — is holding

MV Sport's edge is decoration (screen print, embroidery, DTG, heat transfer). Invoiced decoration revenue has been stable at ~$8M/yr, and the high-value methods (embroidery especially) are intact. The top line isn't eroding because the core capability is weakening — it's steady work being spread across more, smaller jobs.

Invoiced decoration services (INVOICE_LI_SERVICES × SERVICE_M, div V). Per-method detail — including embroidery's high revenue-per-order — is on the Payroll & orders page under "Decoration ground truth."

The bottom line

Healthy but for payroll. Division V sells ~$75M of decorated apparel a year, keeps its decoration franchise intact, and is processing more orders than ever. The single lever that needs attention is labor cost: it now consumes of sales, up from , driven less by pay rates than by an order mix that has shifted toward many small, handling-heavy orders. The department-level detail — where that labor sits, and its cost per unit and per sales dollar — is on the Payroll & orders page.