Gildan Activewear Inc. is a Canadian manufacturer of branded clothing, including undecorated blank activewear such as t-shirts, sport shirts and fleeces, which are subsequently decorated by screen printing companies with designs and logos.
The company also supplies branded and private label athletic, casual, and dress socks to retail companies in the United States including Gold Toe Brands, PowerSox, SilverToe, Auro, All Pro, and the Gildan brand.
The company also manufactures and distributes Under Armour and New Balance brand socks. The company has approximately 42,000 employees worldwide, and owns and operates manufacturing facilities in Rio Nance, Honduras and the Caribbean.
Glenn and Greg Chamandy founded Gildan in 1984 with the acquisition of a knitting mill in Montreal, Quebec, Canada,[6] to make fabric to supply the Harley Inc., the childrenswear business already owned by the family. It later expanded to sell t-shirts made of 100% cotton to wholesalers, which resold them to United States and Canadian screen-printers, to be decorated with designs and logos. By 1994, Harley was closed in order to focus on the expansion of what had become Gildan Activewear.
Gildan has factories in low-wages countries like Honduras and Haiti, and that has allowed Gildan to lower its price per shirt to below that of Chinese manufacturers as of 2006.
Traded as: TSX: GIL; NYSE: GIL; S&P/TSX 60 component
Industry: Textile, clothing
Founded: 1984
Founder: Glenn Chamandy, Greg Chamandy
Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Subsidiaries: American Apparel (online retailer)
Website: www.gildan.com