Hoodies were developed in Rochester when it was home to Champion Products: Their story

The subject of this week’s “Whatever Happened To?” series is still around, although its Rochester connections were cut more than 20 years ago.

Champion Products, a sportswear company that has outfitted NFL and NBA teams and manufactured garb that became de facto uniforms of the hip-hop community, started in Rochester a year after World War I ended.

Now part of a North Carolina-based conglomerate, Champion once called the Rochester area home for more than 70 years, with headquarters first on Goodman Street and then in Pittsford and manufacturing plants in Wyoming and Livingston counties. Read more at Democrat & Chronicle.