Domestic Knitwear & Hosiery Mill
The industry — Apparel knitting mills
Base industry report for 3151 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 39
- Under 10 employeesA
- 64%
- Establishments · USA
- 196
- Employment · USA
- 8,915
- Payroll · USA
- $333M
Of 39 Canadian establishments with employees, 64% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Prove the value in money the buyer already counts. The need is real; what is unproven is that this buyer moves budget for it. That is a priced test with real customers, not a product problem.
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.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 4
The 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.
Knit apparel is a shipped good priced against vertically integrated offshore production — Gildan's own plants are the example. A Canadian mill sells to Canadian brands, uniform buyers and its own direct customers, but every one of them can buy the same garment from a supplier abroad, so the competitive geography is international.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gildan ActivewearNYSE/TSX: GILA | $3.6B | — | 2025 net sales from continuing operations, up 11% — Montreal-headquartered and vertically integrated, with plants primarily in Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Asia. Its US$125.0M of Canadian sales alone exceeds the whole Canadian industry's factory revenue |
| HanesBrandsA | not disclosed | — | Acquired by Gildan, closed 1 December 2025; contributed US$217M of net sales from 1 to 28 December 2025. No longer an independent competitor |
| Stanfield'sC | not disclosed | — | Truro, Nova Scotia — the best-known surviving Canadian knitter. Privately held and publishes nothing; Nova Scotia carries one establishment in the count |
| Tricots LiesseC | not disclosed | — | Montreal knitter on the Canadian Textiles Industry Association's published member list. Privately held; no revenue published and no research beyond the listing |
Evidence
Evidence. Gildan's sales, margins, geographic split, HanesBrands closing date and the description of where its plants are were read in its full-year 2025 results release as furnished on Form 6-K [A]. Canadian industry revenue is from Statistics Canada's Annual Survey of Manufacturing and Logging Industries, table 16-10-0117-01, 2024 preliminary [A]. The comparison has limits: Gildan's Canadian sales are in US dollars and include printwear blanks, underwear and socks at wholesale, while the industry figure is Canadian-dollar factory revenue — they show an order of magnitude, not a market share. Whether Gildan knits anything in Canada was not checked. That surviving mills live on provenance, uniforms and short runs is UNVERIFIED trade knowledge; no surviving Canadian mill discloses revenue. The cut factor is analyst judgment. The competitive field added later names the Canadian survivors: Tricots Liesse from the Canadian Textiles Industry Association's published member list [B], and Stanfield's from general knowledge of the trade [C]. Neither publishes revenue, employment or capacity, and neither was researched beyond that; their place on the record is as names, not as sized competitors.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
National apparel-industry association: government relations, customs and trade, product compliance, HR/training, Canadian apparel directory. No member count stated.
Montreal fashion-industry cluster (non-profit); says about 250 industry actors join each year; runs Premiere Vision Montreal and export programs. French-language site.
Brands represented ('more than 1,100 world famous name brands' per homepage); trade, sourcing and brand-protection policy body.
Washington lobby for US textile mills including knitters and yarn spinners; trade-policy and Berry Amendment advocacy. No member count stated.
Member companies ('more than 200' brands, retailers, manufacturers and textile providers per homepage); US sewn-products / Made in America network with a Fall Networking Conference.
UK-published (Inside Textiles Ltd) trade news site for circular and flat knitting and hosiery technology; weekly newsletter; articles dated Sept 2026.
US textile-industry trade magazine (Textile Industries Media Group); fibre, knitting and finishing technology; articles dated Sept 21 2026.
Canada's apparel and textile sourcing show; Sept 23-25 2026 at The International Centre (Mississauga). Site fetched with a certificate warning but content confirmed.
The Hosiery Association (thehosieryassociation.org) no longer resolves; there is no live hosiery-specific association in North America that could be verified.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.