NAICS 315120Canadian industry · 6-digitinternational market

Apparel knitting mills

SoftwareApparel PLM & Production Management 315

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in knitting clothing. Establishments classified in this industry may finish the clothing that they knit. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 39
Under 10 employeesA: 64%

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

1–41846%

5–9718%

10–19615%

20–4925%

50–99410%

100–19913%

200–49913%

500+0—

Of 39 Canadian establishments with employees, 64% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec2667%

Ontario821%

British Columbia25%

Nova Scotia13%

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.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 315, 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.

international competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 315 Apparel manufacturing

Domestic apparel manufacture competes with offshore labour and wins only on speed, small runs, uniforms or provenance.

Who sets the price: Brands and retailers; offshore contract production sets the floor.
The software it runs on: Product lifecycle management and production tracking.

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 3151 Apparel knitting mills covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3151

Domestic Knitwear & Hosiery MillOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

Canada has a world-scale knitter, and it is the reason not to start one. Gildan, headquartered in Montreal, reported 2025 net sales of $3,619M, up 11%, at a 31.2% gross margin and a 21.5% adjusted operating margin [A], from what it describes as vertically integrated, large-scale plants located primarily in Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Asia — and it closed the purchase of HanesBrands on 1 December 2025. Its sales to Canada alone were US$125.0M [A]. The entire Canadian apparel-knitting industry made C$108.7M in 2024, down from C$212.0M in 2015 [A]. So the country's own champion sells more into Canada than every Canadian knitting mill produces, from a plant network built mostly abroad. The pre-screen cut this on plant, but plant is not the binding problem: 25 of the 39 establishments have fewer than ten employees, and two-thirds sit in Quebec's old hosiery and sweater trade. The cut is willingness to pay. The buyer of a T-shirt, a sock or a fleece carries a reference price set by a company earning thirty-one points of gross margin at that price. A domestic mill survives only on buyers who will pay a multiple for provenance, a uniform contract or a fast small run — and an industry that has halved in nine years is the measure of how many there are. The software sold to apparel makers is screened separately.

NAICS 31514 vendors named11 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.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 315 Apparel manufacturing

Apparel PLM & Production ManagementOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Centric Software (Dassault Systèmes)

Centric has consolidated apparel PLM and now sits behind Dassault's balance sheet, with the brand-side buyer standardised and the factory side served by whatever the brand mandates. The remaining independents are being bought rather than beaten. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 3158 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

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 →