american giant
Category: clothes
Founder: Bayard Winthrop (majority stake purchased by Miguel McKelvey in 2022)
Established: 2011
position: Plants located in San Francisco, California and North Carolina
Representative products:classic full zip (also known as “The Best Hoodie Ever”), ladies rib tanks, vintage flannel
overview:
- Mr. Winthrop has been a vocal advocate of trade policies that promote domestic manufacturing.
- The company’s latest release of its annual Independence Day “Made in America” T-shirts sold out in one day
- Carolina Cotton Works in Gaffney, South Carolina, employs about 200 people to dye and finish the fabrics for American Giant’s T-shirt and flannel lines.
In his own words (Winthrop):
It’s not enough to sit on a porch in San Francisco and say the solution to this country’s ills is to train a bunch of people in South Carolina how to be engineers or programmers at Google… [W]We need to create good, viable, and dignified jobs across the economic spectrum, skill levels, and education levels.
The problem is that we’ve reached a point today where consumers expect a $4 T-shirt from Shein. And I’m going to say no. The cost is $12. It will be of slightly better quality and more in line with your values. ”
We don’t even think about wisdom anymore. It’s just a qualification and a degree. And I have deep faith in the wisdom of average Americans to be bullish on things like this.
