According to Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO of American Giant, which has always relied on American production, the capabilities proven by the brand’s Walmart partnership have big implications for the fashion industry. At the same time, they beg questions about why brands, retailers and policymakers have not yet rallied to rebuild domestic supply chains. Select comments from his new Glossy Podcast interview, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.

Doing business in a new way

“I had spent a good chunk of my career making consumer products — a lot of apparel, a lot of footwear. And as part of that process, I inevitably offshored my manufacturing. I started in the U.S. — started locally, started with small production runs. And then, as those businesses grew, I offshored the manufacturing almost entirely to China. And it dawned on me over time that there were two things happening that I didn’t love. One was that I was getting really disconnected from the product that I made. And, at least in my judgment, it’s really hard to be a product company and not be close to the making of the things that you’re selling. And I felt that was particularly true with apparel. Being intimately involved with the manufacturing process itself made me a better steward of the product I sold. And as I offshored these businesses, I found myself getting really disconnected. And, as part of that, it became unclear what kind of businesses I was running anymore. I  entered those [businesses] for love of the product and found myself just selling stuff. And so that, on a personal level, was problematic. And just as important, or more so, were the implications of those moves. I’m a globalist and I’m a believer in free trade, but I couldn’t shake this growing feeling that I was abandoning partnerships and communities and people that had stuck by me and valued the jobs that our businesses provided. And I just didn’t like that any longer — the fact that I was offshoring over some small amount of money on something I was making. And so, when I started American Giant, it was in opposition to that. I wanted to build a business that was committed to local manufacturing and where I was really involved in the product itself. And that was as simple as it was at that time. I wanted to build a company that made great stuff here. And I didn’t know if that would be a big company or a small company, but I knew it was something that I’d be proud to run. And we started in 2011 with a single sweatshirt, men’s only, and took that leap of faith.”

The big implications of Walmart’s commitment to American-made products

“Walmart is a retailer with whom I have much to disagree about. They’ve in some ways been not the best force, in terms of their impact on U.S. manufacturing over their lifetime. But they have recently, in the last 10 years, really become a growing advocate for American-made products and American-made jobs. And one of the things they’ve done that very few people know about is they’ve committed $350 billion over the next decade to purchasing American-made goods, and that’s a really good thing. And that should be celebrated, and it should be acknowledged for what it is. And it stands in very stark contrast with every other major retailer, whether it’s Target or Amazon, which — in the latter’s case — is actively lobbying to make it more and more difficult to manufacture in the United States, in my judgment. And so I made that point on a podcast. And that podcast made the rounds at Walmart, and the person who is leading their American-made textiles initiative, which is a significant initiative, reached out to us and said, ‘Listen, we heard your podcast. We need help on the textile side of things, and we’d love to talk.’ And I will talk to absolutely anybody who wants to talk about textile manufacturing, particularly in the United States. And so that began with a trip out to Bentonville. And what emerged out of that over time was a discussion around how incredible it would be if we could get the volume that Walmart brings to bear, which as we all know is astounding — the amount of volume they do — and got a commitment in time and volume for them for some American-made products. And when you do that, a couple of remarkable things happen. When you have a partner like Walmart that can drive real volume and is willing to commit over time, that sends an incredible message to the supply chains we discussed earlier. It gives a tremendous amount of faith and reliability that is really lacking in American production. And so the dialog essentially was, ‘Look, we would love to do this. We need a committed partner to step up and stand next to us, be committed over time, not be wobbly if things don’t go perfectly, and commit to a volume that is going to give people the confidence to invest what they need to.’ And so they said, ‘We’re in. We will do that.’ And to their great credit. And so we started working over the last year on a T-shirt program that will be in-store on July 4. It’s a line of four T-shirts for men and women — a unisex tee in four colorways that retails for $12.98 at Walmart, which is an incredible achievement for the men and women who participated in making this thing in the supply chain. And it is going to be absolutely profoundly important to the supply chain, as well, because it’s the kind of volume that the industry desperately needs. And in my judgment, it begins to pose a question to the other retailers and the presidential candidates, for that matter. If this is possible, if you can produce a really high-quality, 100% cotton, entirely made in the United States T-shirt that retails for $12.98 at Walmart, why isn’t every other brand and retailer doing that?”