NAICS 31491Industry · 5-digitnational market

Textile bag and canvas mills

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing textile bags, such as shipping and other industrial bags; or products from canvas or canvas substitutes, such as tarpaulins and tents. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 186
Under 10 employeesA: 54%
Establishments · USA: 1,389
Employment · USA: 22,624
Payroll · USA: $1.1B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–44826%

5–95328%

10–193619%

20–493519%

50–99137%

100–19911%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 186 Canadian establishments with employees, 54% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec6334%

Ontario5932%

British Columbia2212%

Alberta169%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 314, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 314 Textile product mills

Cut-and-sew and technical textile products survive where runs are short, specifications are demanding or delivery has to be quick.

Who sets the price: Import competition on commodity goods; the customer's specification on technical work.
The software it runs on: Manufacturing ERP, often light.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3149 Other textile product mills covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3149

Canvas, Awning & Industrial Sewing ShopExecution decides

binding constraint: defensibility

This is the most reachable group on the textile branch, and the screen does not find a clean kill. It is a residual code; the niche examined is the canvas shop — awnings, boat covers, truck tarps, tents, enclosures. Entry is industrial sewing machines, a cutting floor and a frame welder, and 323 of the 514 Canadian establishments have fewer than ten employees. The work is measured and fitted on site, which gives it a protection the specification niches in the Technical Textiles & Cut-and-Sew record lack: nobody imports a fitted awning. The group earned $1,290.9M in 2024 against $1,102.1M of expenses [A]. Two cautions carry the screen. First, textile bag and canvas revenue ran from $558.1M in 2019 to $760.5M in 2022 and back to $539.3M in 2024 [A] — a bump that has fully unwound, so anyone pricing a shop on its 2022 or 2023 books is buying the peak. Second, nothing here is proprietary. The shelter from imports is equally available to the next sewer who leaves to open a shop, the price is a quote against that shop, and capacity is whatever skilled sewers can be hired. The nominal cut is defensibility. A full study would test, in one metropolitan area: shop count and backlog, the supply of industrial sewers, seasonality, and whether buying a retiring owner's shop with its dealer and marina accounts beats starting cold. Rope, flags, embroidery contracting and the rest of the residual were not examined.

NAICS 31493 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 314 Textile product mills

Technical Textiles & Cut-and-SewOne thing must be true

binding constraint: market size

Canadian cut-and-sew survives in the niches offshore production cannot serve — short runs, certified technical fabric, defence and medical specifications — and those niches are genuinely underserved. They are also small, and the skilled sewing labour that would staff a line has largely left the trade. Two figures set the scale. The country's largest buyer of certified sewn goods put its whole requirement into one contract worth up to C$3.7B over 20 years, awarded to Logistik Unicorp in October 2022, covering about 1,222 items for more than 160,000 people with a Canadian-manufacture majority attached [A]. That is not a market an entrant wins a slice of; it is a prime contract awarded once a generation, and the work below it is subcontracted on the prime's terms. What the certified work earns is visible at the listed comparable: Lakeland Fire + Safety grew net sales 15.2% to US$192.6M in fiscal 2026 and still lost US$25.3M, its gross margin falling from 41.1% to 32.9% [A]. The cut is market size. A viable business exists here — 227 of the 628 Canadian establishments have one to four employees, so small shops plainly survive — but the certification that keeps the work onshore is the same thing that concentrates it into long awards, and only eleven establishments in the country employ 100 or more people.

NAICS 3145 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Manufacturing ERP, often light.

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 31491. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
314910	Textile bag and canvas mills	186	screened at 3149

Alongside it, under 3149 Other textile product mills

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
31499	All other textile product mills	328	screened at 3149