Provisions: American Giant

American Giant

Category: Apparel

Founder: Bayard Winthrop (majority stake purchased by Miguel McKelvey in 2022)

See also Align's profile of Winthrop.

Founded: 2011

Location: San Francisco, California, with factories in North Carolina

Representative products:Classic full-zip (aka "the greatest hoodie ever made"), Women's rib tank, Vintage flannel

At a glance:

• Winthrop is a vocal advocate for trade policy to boost domestic manufacturing.
• The company's most recent annual Fourth of July "Made in America" T-shirt release sold out in a day
• Gaffney, South Carolina's, Carolina Cotton Works employs almost 200 people to dye and finish fabrics for American Giant's T-shirt and flannel lines.

In his own words (Winthrop):

It's not enough for me to sit on my porch in San Francisco and say that the solution to the country's ills is to train a bunch of people living in South Carolina how to become engineers or Google coders ... [W]e need to create good, viable, dignified work throughout the economic spectrum, throughout the skill level, throughout the educational level.

The problem is today we've reached a point where the consumer expects to get a T-shirt for four bucks from Shein. And I'm going to say, 'No. It costs $12. It's going to be a little better quality and it's going to be aligned with your values.
We don't really even think about wisdom any more. It's just credentials and degrees. And I have a deep faith in the wisdom of the average American to begin to call bulls**t on stuff like this.

Editor's note: American Giant is a sponsor of BlazeTV's "The Glenn Beck Program."