Did the Blue Angels Get a Good Deal?

The Navy has “suddenly” dropped a long-time vendor, The Sewing Box, for the Blue Angels’ distinctive uniforms, ending a 43-year relationship. 

Julius Sanks | September 2, 2026

The Navy has “suddenly” dropped a long-time vendor, The Sewing Box, for the Blue Angels’ distinctive uniforms, ending a 43-year relationship. Announced on May 14, 2026, the new contractor is Aquila International LLC. Some claim the new contract price is more than double the nearly $700,000 paid to The Sewing Box since 2008, so it’s supposedly a bad deal. If that is not enough, The Sewing Box is black-owned. Oh, the humanity!

But was it sudden? No. Is it a bad deal? No. The people who write this stuff know little about federal contracting. The Navy did not take sudden action. The numbers cited are accurate, but are apples and oranges. A bit of analysis shows that.

According to USAspending, The Sewing Box, doing business as Jellie B The Sewing Box LLC, performed this work since 2014. The firm did work earlier, but the Commerce Business Daily and FedBizOpps are no longer available, so it’s not possible to review their earlier work. In any event, the company performed 14 jobs in those 12 years. All were purchase orders (PO). The feds use POs for simple acquisitions, typically for off-the-shelf items. Contracts are for more complex work. Eight had very short periods of performance (POP); some only one day. The vendor provided products it already had in stock. Starting in 2017 the POs had a one-year POP. The scope was for fitting and delivering ceremonial flight suits.

Despite prior justifications for awarding the work sole-source to The Sewing Box, this was a full and open........

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