**California**: Bayard Winthrop, founder of American Giant, shares his journey from offshoring to revitalising US-made clothing, highlighting supply chain challenges, trade policies, and the need for skilled labour to rebuild domestic apparel manufacturing sustainably.
Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO of California-based apparel company American Giant, has shared his perspective on the challenges and opportunities of domestic manufacturing in the United States, drawing from his personal journey as a small consumer product manufacturer.
Winthrop reflected on his early adoption of libertarian economic principles, which led him to offshore production overseas in pursuit of cost savings. However, over time, he became dissatisfied with the disconnection from the products he was selling and the impact on workers. This shift in outlook coincided with the birth of his first daughter in 2010, which inspired him to launch American Giant with the goal of revitalising American-made clothing. His debut product, a men’s sweatshirt dubbed “the greatest hoodie ever made” by a news article, quickly gained popularity and put the company on backorder for nearly three years.
Winthrop highlighted the stark changes in the US textile industry over recent decades. “In 1970, something like 95% of all clothing bought by Americans was made in America. Now it’s less than 5%,” he observed, noting that the industry has become fragmented, with separate facilities for spinning, dyeing, knitting, and sewing scattered across the country. This disaggregation creates logistical challenges in maintaining domestic supply chains, compared with the integrated factory networks available in China. For example, orders for specialised apparel can attract multiple factory bids in China, whereas in the US, businesses must coordinate among many smaller operations.
Despite the difficulties, American Giant has scaled up production substantially, including a large-volume T-shirt programme with Walmart. This growth has helped ease supply chain complexity and costs, according to Winthrop, who emphasised that US cotton and yarn production remain strong, with the country even being a net exporter of both. However, he cautioned that sewing capacity—the most labour-intensive stage—would take time to expand due to workforce shortages and skill gaps.
The CEO expressed support for recent shifts in US trade policy targeting China, seeing it as beneficial in bringing discussions about trade balance and supply chain resilience to the forefront of national discourse. “The country is finally having robust conversations in DC and on Main Street about what is wrong with our trading relationships and what needs to get fixed,” he said. Winthrop cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a clear example of risks associated with reliance on foreign suppliers, particularly for critical medical goods.
Nonetheless, he criticised the communication around tariffs as “disjointed” and warned about the destabilising impact on businesses, which face unpredictability that may hamper investment. He also highlighted that many essential manufacturing inputs from friendly countries like Canada and Vietnam are being lumped into the same category as China, despite significant differences in trade relations.
Winthrop voiced optimism about the potential to rebuild a domestic knitwear industry that produces high-quality goods at scale, recalling that the US was once the global centre for knitwear manufacturing. “You can absolutely… make very high-quality, very large volume knitwear in the United States—most companies have just forgotten how to do it.” He underscored the need to attract workers into sewing and other factory roles by offering training and stable employment opportunities, rather than defaulting to low-wage service jobs.
On the topic of labour costs and consumer prices, Winthrop said he accepts the trade-off that Americans might pay somewhat more for domestically made products in exchange for better jobs in manufacturing towns. He views this as a necessary rebalancing that could help revitalise communities struggling economically. He remarked, “If the effect of that is that average Americans need to begin to be a bit more conscious of how they’re consuming, I’ll take that trade.”
Ultimately, Winthrop believes there is middle ground between the extremes of complete offshoring and full domestic manufacturing. He hopes for a more rational approach that supports working-class Americans and reintroduces vitality to parts of the country where the economy has faltered, while acknowledging that a full return to the industrial landscape of the 1970s is unlikely. His reflections provide insight into the complexities of reshaping the US textile and apparel sector amid evolving economic, trade, and social dynamics.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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