Gildan

Gildan's own corporate history page: "Joseph Chamandy starts Harley Inc., a basic children's apparel manufacturing company... in Montreal, Canada. Joseph Chamandy's grandsons, Greg and Glenn Chamandy, take over the Company's leadership... The Company becomes a vertically-integrated manufacturing company as it acquires a knitting mill with circular machines." The company's own account says the "Gildan" name combines the names of two salesmen who worked there at the time.

In 1984, the Chamandy brothers bought a Montreal knitting mill to supply fabric to the family's children's-wear business — and pivoted hard into blank cotton t-shirts for the wholesale screen-printing market once they saw the bigger opportunity.