Gildan Activewear Inc. is bracing for a lengthy lull in its main printwear business as the maker of T-shirts and socks gears down operations and slashes costs to weather the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.
Sales of Gildan’s “imprintables” – basically blank T-shirts and other clothing used to make specialized apparel such as children’s softball team jerseys – dropped 75 per cent in April as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world. The Montreal-based company said it believes demand won’t shrink further but that the timing of a pickup remains unclear.
“We think it’s going to be a slow trajectory,” Gildan chief executive officer Glenn Chamandy said in an interview Thursday after the company’s virtual annual meeting. “We definitely will have less sales as we go forward. And they will be a function of how people will move around and how things open up. If they open up quicker, we’ll start selling more. So that’s the point. We just don’t know.”
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