Silks Hosiery Brand Bought By Gildan

On Thursday, June 19, 2014, they bought practically all of the assets of the manufacturer of Silks, which means that they bought the property and the factories, and the other brands.

When I read this, I took a moment to think about what it meant to consumers of and sellers of Silks. From what I read in the news articles and the press release from Gildan, it probably means nothing to us, because Gildan is intending to add these products to their current offerings, as opposed to absorbing the Silks market share into their own. Gildan does not have a pantyhose and tights market, so that means that the brand and styles should continue to be available as is.

Some consumers might be a bit nervous about the transition, because of their experiences with the transition of Silks hosiery and Energizers hosiery from Phantom Hosiery to Doris Hosiery Mills. Indeed, it has been a rough transition for Silks and Energizers. The dust is finally settling down, so this new transition might make us feel a bit nervous, but for the most part, I think that we will be able to continue on with business as usual. After all, the hosiery styles are new; the hosiery packaging is new; the web site is new; the images are new. There is just so little incentive to making any big changes.

Another reason that I think that there will be no changes: the experience levels of both companies in hosiery is completely different. Because Gildan does not have experience in pantyhose and tights, they probably will not make any modifications to the styles, colours, and sizes. When Doris Hosiery Mills bought over the Silks brand, Doris all ready had a competing brand, and they had expertise in pantyhose and tights. Therefore, Doris was qualified to make modifications to the styles that were in the best interest of the consumer.

It is worth pointing out that Gildan is a Canadian company. That means that we will not need to worry about the products beind sent from another country, and then paying border fees.

That being said, there should be a few small changes. They will want to change the packaging to reflect that the hosiery products are Gildan products. The changes will probably be just in the fine print at the back. I could imagine that there is a lot of packaging all ready at the factories that need to be used up, before they start using updated packaging.

If Gildan does make any major changes, then I will do my best to keep people updated, so that you can prepare for any changes to your favourite Silks styles.

Hosiery enthusiasts, hosiery consumers, and hosiery sellers, should not need to look into this matter any further, but if we do want to read more about this, then we can check out Gildan's press release from their web site, as well as a couple of Yahoo! articles[1 2], and a Bloomberg article.

Thank you for reading!