Apparel Knitting Mills (NAICS 315120) — a U.S. industry primer

1. Overview

Apparel knitting mills are factories that turn yarn directly into finished garments — socks, sweaters, hosiery, T-shirts, underwear, and other knit clothing — often knitting the fabric and shaping the product in one integrated operation. This is different from the rest of the clothing industry, which mostly buys finished fabric and cuts and sews it. [4][18]

For an investor, the story of this industry is the story of a nearly complete offshore migration. Domestic U.S. output has been shrinking for three decades as production moved to Central America and Asia, and the federal statistics now describe a small surviving remnant, not the market that American consumers actually buy from. [5][6]

Ways in are limited. There is essentially one large publicly traded way to get exposure — Gildan Activewear (which in December 2025 acquired HanesBrands and doubled its size) — but even Gildan does most of its knitting outside the United States. [8][9] Fruit of the Loom is another important integrated competitor, but it is a wholly owned Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary rather than a separately investable company; its North American cloth manufacturing occurs primarily in Honduras. [19] The domestic side of the industry is almost entirely private: family-owned sock and specialty mills concentrated in North Carolina, Alabama, and a handful of other states, plus niche performance and medical-legwear makers. [5][7]

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 315120 covers establishments that primarily (a) knit apparel directly from yarn, or (b) knit fabric and then make it into apparel, in the same establishment. It includes sock and hosiery mills, sweater mills, and other knit-outerwear and knit-underwear mills, as well as "jobbers" that own the design, materials, and commercial process while arranging production. In the 2022 NAICS revision, two older 2017 codes — 315110 (Hosiery and Sock Mills) and 315190 (Other Apparel Knitting Mills) — were merged into today's single 315120; pre-2022 time series must aggregate both predecessors for valid comparisons. [4][1][20]

Production methods. Production ranges from circular knitting of socks, underwear, and tubular fabric to flat-bed or fully fashioned knitting of sweaters and shaped panels. Computerized flat-bed and "whole-garment" machines can knit shaped or nearly finished garments with much less cutting waste and sewing labor. Domestic specialists such as Tailored Industries advertise yarn-to-finished-garment, on-demand production in roughly four weeks, illustrating the short-run, rapid-replenishment niche in which U.S. mills can compete. [21]

What it excludes (adjacent codes). The boundary matters, because most of what people think of as "the knit-clothing business" is filed elsewhere:

• NAICS 313 — Textile Mills: spinning yarn and knitting or weaving fabric that is sold as fabric (not made into a garment). Upstream of 315120. [18]
• NAICS 315210 — Cut and Sew Apparel Contractors and 315250 — Cut and Sew Apparel Manufacturing (except Contractors): firms that make clothing by cutting and sewing purchased woven or knit fabric. That is how most shirts, pants, and dresses are made. [18]
• Brand owners and importers (Nike, Lululemon, and the like) design knit apparel but manufacture through offshore contractors — they are not U.S. knitting mills and do not appear in 315120. [not counted]

An important classification caution: HTS Chapter 61 "knitted apparel" import totals are product-based trade statistics, whereas 315120 is an establishment classification based on production process. Treating the two as the same "market size" is a common and material error. [20]

Ownership mix. A few large branded manufacturers (Gildan; the former HanesBrands) dominate the categories at retail, but they knit largely offshore. The U.S.-located establishments counted in 315120 are overwhelmingly small, privately held mills — most with fewer than a few dozen employees. Two business models coexist: vertically integrated manufacturers that own knitting and finishing assets, and jobbers/brand managers that control design and retailer relationships while contracting operations. [5][7]

3. How big it is (federal figures, and an important caveat)

Our ground-truth federal statistics for the U.S. industry:

(Firm and establishment counts come from different survey years, which is why they differ slightly; both point to roughly 180–220 mostly small firms.) An independent estimate from IBISWorld puts 2025 industry revenue at about $945 million across ~161 businesses, declining roughly 3.3% per year over 2020–2025 — consistent with continued shrinkage since the 2022 Census. [5]

Long-term structural decline. BLS productivity data show that in 2024 alone, output in the apparel-knitting aggregate fell 11.2% and hours worked fell 17.0%. Over the period 1987–2024, output declined at a 6.7% average annual rate and hours worked declined 7.5% annually. This is fundamentally a long-shrinking domestic production base, not a secular-growth manufacturing category. [23]

The caveat — federal stats capture the domestic remnant, not the U.S. market. This is not a classic undercount of tiny operators. It is the reverse: the ~$1.2 billion of domestic mill output is a small slice of what Americans actually spend on knit apparel, because the market is served overwhelmingly by imports and by U.S. brands producing offshore. Knit socks and hosiery imports alone were about $2.63 billion in 2024 (China supplied ~$1.09 billion of that), more than double total domestic knitting-mill receipts. [14] Total U.S. apparel imports were $79.3 billion in 2023, with China and Vietnam together supplying slightly less than 40%. [24] Only an estimated ~2.5% of apparel bought in the U.S. is domestically produced, and U.S. textile-and-apparel manufacturing employment fell to 270,700 in 2024, down 18.4% from 2019. [6] So the industry's footprint as consumers experience it is far larger than the domestic figures — but most of that value is offshore.

4. The investable universe

There is no pure-play, U.S.-domestic apparel-knitting-mill public stock, and no pure-play ETF. The closest large public name is Gildan, and even Gildan knits mostly offshore. The genuinely domestic mills are private.

Adjacent public names investors sometimes conflate (not 315120 mills): Unifi (NYSE: UFI) spins recycled polyester yarn (upstream, NAICS 313); Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) provides highly diluted exposure through Fruit of the Loom; brand owners like Nike (NKE) and Lululemon design knit apparel but outsource manufacturing offshore. [18][19][not counted]

5. How the money works

This is a capacity-utilization and input-cost business, like other commodity manufacturing — not a same-store-sales or fee-income business. Owners make money on the spread between what a garment sells for and the cost to convert yarn into it.

• Input costs dominate. The biggest cost is yarn — cotton, polyester and nylon (oil-linked), wool, and spandex. Margins move with commodity cycles: when cotton or synthetic-fiber prices spike, mills that can't pass the cost through get squeezed. Large integrated players like Gildan may fix cotton and polyester prices as much as 24 months before delivery, reducing exposure to price increases but leaving them over-costed if fiber prices fall. [5][25]
• Capacity utilization drives fixed-cost absorption. Modern circular sock machines and computerized flat-knitting machines are capital-intensive and run around the clock. Keeping them full is what turns thin gross margins into profit; idle machines burn fixed costs. Machine utilization, batch length, changeover time, first-quality yield, and scrap materially affect unit cost. [5]
• Vertical integration captures more margin. The scale winners (the Gildan model) spin their own yarn, knit, finish, and sew — capturing margin at each step and controlling cost. [8]
• Two ways to win. (1) Commodity scale — huge volumes of basic tees, underwear, and socks at rock-bottom cost, which in practice means low-wage offshore production; thin margins, enormous throughput. (2) Protected or premium niches — military (Berry Amendment), medical/compression legwear, performance/outdoor wool, and quick-turn private label, where domestic mills earn a premium for speed, specialization, or a legal "made-in-USA" requirement rather than competing on price. [12][13][16]
• Labor is the structural disadvantage. A U.S. apparel worker costs roughly $15–$20 an hour versus under $1 an hour in Bangladesh or Vietnam. Sock knitting is highly automated (so labor is a smaller share), but finishing, boarding, and packing are hands-on — enough to keep commodity production offshore. Census data show annual payroll at roughly 26% of sales, excluding benefits, contractor labor, and non-payroll production costs. [6]
• Seasonality. T-shirt demand is historically highest in the second quarter; fleece demand is strongest ahead of fall and winter; hosiery and underwear sales are weighted toward back-to-school and the Christmas period. Retailer inventory policy often matters more to a mill's quarterly orders than underlying consumer sell-through. [25]

6. What drives demand

• Overall clothing spending, which tracks consumer income, confidence, population, and school participation. Basics like socks and underwear are staples, so demand is less cyclical than fashion apparel — a relative stabilizer. [5]
• Fashion and activity trends — the athleisure and performance-sock boom lifted premium knit categories. [5]
• Import competition and the dollar. A strong dollar and cheap imports pull demand away from domestic mills; trade barriers push it back. This is now the single biggest swing factor. [6][11]
• Retail channel shifts — mass retailers, e-commerce, and direct-to-consumer sock/underwear brands reshape who buys from mills and on what terms. E-commerce and demand-based replenishment favor flexible domestic mills, while large commodity runs continue to favor foreign integrated producers. [5]
• Government procurement — the military must buy domestic, giving U.S. mills a guaranteed niche. [13]
• Fiber substitution. Cotton competes with polyester and other synthetics on price, performance, moisture management, and durability. USDA estimated U.S. apparent retail cotton use at 8.3 billion raw-fiber-equivalent pounds in 2025, down 1% from 2024 — showing fiber demand is mature and volatile rather than a reliable industry-growth engine. [26]

7. Regulation

Trade policy is the regulatory story here, and 2025 was a turning point.

• De minimis repeal (2025). For decades, Section 321 of the Tariff Act let parcels under $800 enter duty-free, which powered ultra-cheap direct-from-China fashion (Shein, Temu). In May 2025 the exemption was eliminated for Chinese-origin goods, so those parcels now face full duties plus Section 301 China tariffs. The domestic textile lobby (National Council of Textile Organizations) had argued the loophole "devastated the U.S. textile industry"; its repeal is the biggest policy tailwind for domestic mills in years. [11]
• Rules of origin — "yarn-forward." Under USMCA (the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement) and CAFTA-DR (the Central America–Dominican Republic FTA), knit apparel gets duty-free access only if the yarn spinning, the knitting, and the assembly all happen inside the trade bloc ("triple transformation"). This is why so much U.S.-brand knitting sits in Central America rather than Asia. [12]
• Berry Amendment. The Department of Defense must buy clothing, fabric, fiber, yarn, and footwear — including socks — that are grown and produced in the United States. This creates a reliable, price-insulated domestic niche (e.g., military-spec socks). A related Kissell Amendment covers some Homeland Security purchases. [13][27]
• Labor compliance. The Department of Labor requires minimum wage, overtime even for piece-rate workers, recordkeeping, and restrictions on industrial homework for garment workers. A Southern California garment survey found FLSA violations in 80% of more than 50 investigations, though that survey covered the wider garment-contractor sector and should not be attributed specifically to knitting mills. [28]
• Labeling and safety. FTC textile/wool labeling and country-of-origin rules, CPSC flammability standards (notably knit children's sleepwear), and CPSIA limits for children's products all apply. [general]
• Forced-labor screening. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) blocks goods tied to Xinjiang cotton, affecting imported knit goods and supply-chain due diligence. [general]
• Environmental. Wet finishing creates wastewater, chemical, and energy exposure. EPA's textile-mill effluent rules regulate pollutants including biochemical and chemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, oil and grease, sulfide, phenols, and chromium. EPA is also studying PFAS use and discharges from textile mills, creating potential future monitoring, treatment, and reformulation costs. Applicability depends on the process performed, not merely the establishment's NAICS code. [29]
• Occupational safety. OSHA's cotton-dust standard expressly states that it does not generally apply to knitting operations or to handling already woven or knitted material, although upstream yarn manufacturing and waste-processing operations can be covered. [30]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The domestic industry looks fragmented in the federal data — the U.S. Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration measure) is just 273.8, well below the 1,500 "unconcentrated" line, and the four largest firms hold only 24.3% of domestic receipts. But the long tail is thin: the top 50 firms account for 82.5% of receipts, so a modest number of mid-size mills do most of the domestic work and a crowd of tiny shops splits the rest. [2]

That domestic picture understates real concentration, because the brands that sell knit apparel into the U.S. market are consolidating fast — and they mostly produce offshore:

• Gildan–HanesBrands (December 2025) is the defining event: Gildan bought HanesBrands for ~$2.2 billion in equity (~$4.4 billion enterprise value), doubling its revenue and creating a dominant vertically integrated activewear-and-innerwear player, targeting ~$200 million of annual cost synergies. [9]
• Renfro, the largest U.S. legwear maker, was acquired by The Renco Group in 2021. [15]
• Delta Apparel went bankrupt in 2024 and its assets were sold off — a reminder of how brutal the commodity-blanks segment is. [10]

The survivors' playbook is niche: military/Berry, medical compression, performance wool, and quick-turn private label — competing on agility and specialization rather than price. [7][16]

9. Risks

• Structural import competition. The offshore cost gap is permanent barring policy intervention; commodity domestic knitting keeps shrinking. [6]
• Trade-policy whiplash. Tariffs and the de minimis repeal help domestic mills but raise input costs for anyone importing yarn or finished goods — and policy can reverse with an administration or a court ruling. [11]
• Input-cost volatility. Cotton and oil-linked synthetic fiber prices swing margins directly. [5]
• Customer concentration. Losing a single mass-retailer program (Walmart, Target) or licensor can sink a mill; big buyers dictate price and can shift production among countries. [5]
• Demand cyclicality and destocking. Retail inventory corrections hit order volumes hard even for staples. Sweaters and fleece depend more on weather and fashion than basics. [5]
• Capital intensity and labor. Automation requires ongoing capex and raises technological-obsolescence risk and dependence on imported machinery and parts. The industry faces a limited pool of experienced knitting-machine technicians, programmers, mechanics, and linking operators; skilled machine-operator labor is scarce and getting costlier. [6]
• Consolidation risk for suppliers. Fewer, larger brand buyers (post Gildan–Hanes) means less negotiating power for independent contract knitters. [9]
• Environmental and compliance. Wet-finishing operations face EPA effluent and potential PFAS obligations; labor compliance is material for jobber and contractor models. [28][29]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes. The practical large-cap way in is Gildan (GIL) — a scaled, low-cost, vertically integrated basics manufacturer that now, post-HanesBrands, roughly doubles its footprint in activewear and innerwear and returns cash via dividends and buybacks. [8][9][17] Understand what you are buying: Gildan is a play on low-cost, offshore, vertically integrated commodity knitting and brand distribution, not on U.S. domestic mills. Upstream, Unifi (UFI) offers recycled-yarn exposure; downstream, apparel brand owners give exposure to knit-apparel demand but not to knitting itself. [18]

Private routes. Because the domestic industry is almost all private, the real domestic plays are direct: buying or backing a mill (many are family-owned with succession questions, a classic small-cap/PE roll-up opening), supplying protected niches (Berry-compliant military, medical compression, performance/outdoor), or DTC brands (Bombas, Darn Tough and peers) — though most DTC brands are marketing-and-design companies that outsource the actual knitting. [7][16] Diligence should separate owned manufacturing from imported finished goods, domestic from foreign production, and genuine 315120 activity from fabric-only knitting or cut-and-sew operations. Key underwriting variables include customer concentration, machine age and utilization, operator and programmer retention, style-level margins, yarn-price pass-through, inventory ownership, order minimums, contractor compliance, environmental obligations, and whether the company owns defensible brands or is merely a capacity provider.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). The multi-decade structural decline of commodity U.S. knitting is unlikely to reverse — but 2025 delivered the strongest policy tailwind in a generation: de minimis repeal plus higher China tariffs raise the landed cost of the cheapest imports and should stabilize, and modestly reflate, demand for domestic niche mills. Tempering that, industry insiders stress it will take "more than tariffs" — the U.S. lacks the yarn-spinning, knitting capacity, capex, and labor to reshore volume quickly. The most durable value sits where it already is: global low-cost scale (Gildan) on one end, and legally or functionally protected domestic niches (military, medical, performance) on the other, with the undifferentiated middle continuing to erode. [11][6][9]

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, NAICS 315120 — establishments, employment, payroll. 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — receipts, firms, and concentration ratios (CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI), NAICS 315120. 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 315120 = 850 employees). 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. NAICS Association / Livesight. 2022 NAICS updates — consolidation of 315110 (Hosiery and Sock Mills) and 315190 (Other Apparel Knitting Mills) into 315120 (Apparel Knitting Mills). 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?v=2022&code=315120; https://www.livesight.com/blog/from-code-to-clarity-the-naics-evolution
5. IBISWorld. Apparel Knitting Mills in the US — Industry Analysis (market size ~$945m, ~161 businesses, −3.3% CAGR 2020–2025). 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/apparel-knitting-mills/2034/
6. Sheng Lu (FASH455, University of Delaware) / U.S. Fashion Industry Association. State of U.S. Textile and Apparel Manufacturing, Employment and Trade. April 2025. https://shenglufashion.com/2025/04/07/state-of-u-s-textile-and-apparel-manufacturing-employment-and-trade-updated-april-2025/
7. Encyclopedia of Alabama / Wikipedia. Fort Payne, Alabama — "Sock Capital of the World"; W. B. Davis Hosiery Mill. 2024. https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/fort-payne/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Davis_Hosiery_Mill
8. Finviz / Yahoo Finance / SEC (Form 6-K). Gildan Activewear FY2025 results — record revenue ~$3.6B, adj. operating margin ~21.5%. 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gildan-activewear-gil-achieves-record-072420754.html
9. Apparelist / BNN Bloomberg / SEC. Gildan Announces Completion of HanesBrands Acquisition (Dec 1, 2025) — ~$2.2B equity / ~$4.4B enterprise value, ~$200M synergies. 2025. https://www.apparelist.com/2025/12/02/gildan-announces-completion-of-hanesbrands-acquisition/
10. Yahoo Finance / Bloomberg Law. Delta Apparel Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy (June 30, 2024); Salt Life sold for $28M. 2024. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/delta-apparel-files-bankruptcy-warns-203240207.html
11. Congressional Research Service (Congress.gov, R48380) / Fortune. Imports and the Section 321 (De Minimis) Exemption; elimination for Chinese-origin goods, May 2025. 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48380; https://fortune.com/2025/04/04/the-tariff-loophole-that-drove-shein-and-temu-to-fast-fashion-dominance-is-closing-in-a-month/
12. U.S. Department of Commerce (trade.gov) / U.S. Trade Representative. CAFTA-DR and USMCA textile "yarn-forward" rules of origin. 2024. https://www.trade.gov/summary-cafta-fta-textiles; https://www.trade.gov/summary-usmca-fta-textiles
13. U.S. Department of Commerce (trade.gov) / U.S. Department of Defense. The Berry Amendment (10 U.S.C. §4862) — domestic sourcing of clothing, fiber, yarn, and footwear including socks. 2024. https://www.trade.gov/berry-amendment
14. Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) / IndexBox. Knit Socks and Hosiery (HS 6115) trade — U.S. imports ~$2.63B in 2024; China ~$1.09B. 2024. https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/knit-socks-and-hosiery
15. PR Newswire / ZoomInfo. Renfro Brands acquired by The Renco Group (2021); ~$540M revenue legwear maker. 2021. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worlds-most-renowned-sock-manufacturing-company-renfro-brands-acquired-by-the-renco-group-301308934.html
16. Merino Wool Gear / ZoomInfo. Darn Tough (Cabot Hosiery Mills) company profile — ~$50M+ revenue, 5M+ pairs/yr, Northfield, VT. 2025. https://merinowoolgear.com/darn-tough-company-profile/
17. Macrotrends. Gildan Activewear (GIL) Market Cap — ~$9.4B (2026). 2026. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GIL/gildan-activewear/market-cap
18. NAICS.com / Ask Kodiak / U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. NAICS 315210 (Cut and Sew Apparel Contractors), 315250 (Cut and Sew Apparel Manufacturing except Contractors), and 313 (Textile Mills) — scope and boundaries vs. 315120. 2022. https://naics.askkodiak.com/naics/2022/315250; https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag313.htm
19. Fruit of the Loom / Berkshire Hathaway. Fruit of the Loom company profile (89% self-manufactured); Berkshire Hathaway 2024 Form 10-K (Honduras cloth manufacturing). 2024–2025. https://www.fotlinc.com/our-company/; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095017025025210/brka-20241231.htm
20. Federal Register. North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Updates for 2022 — merger of 315110 and 315190 into 315120. 2021. https://thefederalregister.org/documents/2021-14249/north-american-industry-classification-system-naics-updates-for-2022-update-of-statistical-policy-directive-no-8-standar
21. Tailored Industries. Yarn-to-finished-garment, on-demand U.S. knitwear production. 2025. https://tailored.management/
22. Federal Reserve. G.17 Industrial Production — value added by industry, NAICS 315 (apparel knitting mills: $651M, 2022). 2022. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/SandDesc/table1.17.htm
23. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Productivity and Costs by Industry — apparel knitting output, hours, and productivity trends (2024; 1987–2024 series). April 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/prin_04242025.htm
24. U.S. International Trade Commission. Apparel Competitiveness — U.S. apparel imports $79.3B in 2023; China and Vietnam ~40%. 2024. https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub5543_0.pdf
25. Gildan Activewear. 2025 SEC-filed annual report (MD&A) — net sales breakdown, cost structure, commodity hedging, seasonality. 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1061894/000106189426000006/exhibit991-mdax2025.htm
26. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Cotton and Wool Outlook — U.S. apparent retail cotton use 8.3B lbs in 2025. March 2026. https://www.ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/113948/CWS-26c.pdf
27. Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). 225.7002-1 — Berry Amendment restrictions on clothing including hosiery. 2024. https://login.acquisition.gov/dfars/225.7002-1-restrictions.
28. U.S. Department of Labor. Garment industry compliance toolkit; Southern California garment survey (FLSA violations). 2023. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230322-0; https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/toolkits/garment
29. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Textile Mills Effluent Guidelines — pollutant regulations and PFAS study. 2024. https://www.epa.gov/eg/textile-mills-effluent-guidelines
30. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 29 CFR 1910.1043 — Cotton Dust Standard (knitting operations generally not covered). 2024. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.1043