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Gildan Activewear Inc.

Gildan Activewear Inc.
Public company
Traded as GIL
GIL
S&P/TSX 60 component
Industry Textile, Clothing
Founded 1984
Founder Glenn Chamandy, Greg Chamandy
Headquarters Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Key people
Glenn J. Chamandy (CEO), Rhodri J. Harries (CFO)
Revenue US$ 1.95 billion (FY 2015)
US$ 327.2 million (FY 2015)
US$ 304.9 million (FY 2015)
Total assets US$ 2.83 billion (FY 2015)
Total equity US$ 2.19 billion (FY 2015)
Number of employees
42,000 (2015)
Website www.gildan.com

Gildan Activewear Inc. is a Canadian manufacturer of branded clothing, including undecorated blank activewear such as t-shirts, sport shirts and fleeces, which are subsequently decorated by screen printing companies with designs and logos. The company also supplies branded and private label athletic, casual and dress socks to retail companies in the United States including Gold Toe Brands, PowerSox, SilverToe, Auro, All Pro, and the Gildan brand. The company also manufactures and distributes Under Armour and New Balance brand socks. The company has approximately 42,000 employees worldwide, and owns and operates manufacturing facilities in Rio Nance, Honduras and the Caribbean.

Glenn and Greg Chamandy founded Gildan in 1984 with the acquisition of a knitting mill in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to make fabric to supply the Harley Inc., the childrenswear business already owned by the family. It later expanded to sell t-shirts made of 100% cotton to wholesalers, which resold them to United States and Canadian screen-printers, to be decorated with designs and logos. By 1994, Harley was closed in order to focus on the expansion of what had become Gildan Activewear.

The combination of low wages and advanced technology has allowed Gildan to lower its price per shirt to below that of Chinese manufacturers.

Gildan opened its first offshoring sewing facility in Honduras, in 1997. The plant was vertically integrated and employed 1,200 workers. A year later, the company achieved an Initial public offering and was listed publicly on both the and the NYSE MKT.


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