Underwear Supplier for Miami Buyers: OEM Sourcing from China

Miami is a US market and a Latin American market at the same time, and the underwear trade there reflects both. It is the leading US gateway for apparel trade with Latin America and the Caribbean, and a large share of the apparel moving through its port is imported, warehoused and shipped onward rather than sold in Florida. Unitex Underwear (Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd.) is a China-based underwear supplier working through long-term BSCI-audited partner factories in the Fujian knitwear corridor — men’s, women’s and kids’ knitted underwear, MOQ 2,000 pcs per style and colour, FOB Xiamen.

The Miami Buyer Base, and What It Asks For

Apparel is the largest single commodity moving through PortMiami by value, and the businesses behind that volume split into three groups. The first is the domestic wholesale distributor supplying retail and independent stores across the US Southeast, for whom Miami is a good distribution point because two to four days of ground freight reaches most of the country’s population. The second is the re-exporter, importing stock, holding it under a foreign-trade zone or bonded arrangement, and shipping it to distributors in Colombia, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and the Caribbean. The third is the Latin American headquarters company — over a thousand multinationals run their regional operations from Miami — which buys centrally and supplies several countries from one facility.

The brief that follows from this is different from a Los Angeles one in two respects. First, dual labelling is normal: a garment may need a US label if it stays in domestic commerce and a Spanish-language import label if it ships to a Latin American destination, so the artwork pack is planned for both from the start. Second, the buyer thinks in terms of customs mechanics — whether goods enter US commerce, whether they are held in a foreign-trade zone, and whether duty paid on the inbound leg can be recovered on re-export. Those questions arrive early, and a supplier who can document the product cleanly for entry is worth more than one who cannot.

The market’s bilingual character matters operationally as much as commercially. A warehouse and customs broker network that works in both English and Spanish, and a freight-forwarding trade specialised in Caribbean and Andean lanes, mean the onward leg is well served — which is why the re-export model works here better than almost anywhere else in the United States.

Xiamen to Miami: Through Panama, and the Onward Leg

Miami is an East Coast port, so the trans-Pacific routing runs through the Panama Canal. Port to port transit from Xiamen to Miami is in the region of thirty to thirty-eight days depending on the service and the canal slot situation, with peak-season canal congestion adding two or three days of anchorage on some sailings. Door to door, allow roughly forty to fifty days. A West Coast discharge with rail to Florida is sometimes quoted as an alternative; it rarely wins once inland cost, transit and the extra handling are counted, but it is worth checking when Panama is congested.

Air freight into Miami is a stronger option than in most US cities, because Miami International Airport is the country’s largest airport for international freight, with over a hundred airlines including dedicated cargo carriers. Trans-Pacific air cargo is normally a one-stop routing of two to four days airport to airport, with drayage and customs release adding a few days door to door. That matters for the re-export business, where a Latin American distributor may need stock quickly and air into Miami followed by a short onward flight or sea leg is workable.

For the onward leg, Miami reaches most major Latin American cities within twenty-four to seventy-two hours of departure, and the Caribbean islands in particular are served by frequent short-sea services that consolidate loads from several suppliers — useful when a destination market cannot absorb a full vessel call.

FTZ, Drawback, and the 2026 Duty Stack

The mechanism that defines Miami’s re-export trade is the foreign-trade zone. Miami-Dade County’s Foreign-Trade Zone No. 281 is among the most active in the United States, and goods admitted to a zone are not subject to customs duty until they are entered into US commerce. For an importer holding stock that may go either to domestic customers or to Latin American distributors, that deferral is valuable on its own; combined with duty drawback on goods that are re-exported, the recovery can be a very large share of the duty paid on the inbound leg. This is a specialist area, and it works on the strength of the documentation behind each entry — which is why we are careful about the invoices, packing lists and classifications that go into your file.

The duty position itself is the same federal stack that applies across the United States. A China-origin knit underwear entry pays the base Most-Favoured-Nation rate for its subheading in heading 6107, in the region of seven and a half to nine percent; the legacy Section 301 List 4A duty of 7.5 percent that has applied to most Chapter 61 and 62 apparel since 2019; and a country-specific Section 301 measure for China that took effect on 24 July 2026. The Merchandise Processing Fee applies at 0.3464 percent of entered value with a floor and a ceiling, and the Harbor Maintenance Fee at 0.125 percent on ocean shipments.

Three structural points matter for pricing. The low-value de minimis exemption is gone — Section 321 was withdrawn for China and Hong Kong origin in May 2025, extended to all origins in August 2025, put on a permanent regulatory footing by a CBP interim final rule in June 2026, and repealed by statute with effect from 1 July 2027 — so splitting a shipment into small parcels no longer avoids duty. UFLPA puts the burden on the importer to demonstrate that cotton was not produced in Xinjiang, which for a cotton underwear programme means supply-chain documentation at the mill level. And the labelling regime is federal: fibre content, country of origin and the manufacturer or dealer identity plus care instructions under the FTC rules, with flammability testing under CPSC 16 CFR Part 1610. Because the duty rates have moved repeatedly, confirm the entry-date position on the HTS and in CBP CSMS messages with your broker rather than pricing from a published percentage.

What We Do, and What We Do Not Do

Unitex is a sourcing and supply-chain management company and owns no production facilities. We develop styles, source fabric and trims, place orders with long-term partner factories in the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang corridor, and run production follow-up, AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection and export documentation. Compliance evidence is amfori BSCI at the partner sites and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 for the materials on your order, with certificate numbers shared at quotation and third-party inspection welcome.

For a Miami programme our specific contribution is a product and a document set that can support both a US entry and an onward export: correct invoice descriptions with fibre percentages and knit construction, packing lists that reconcile, a US label variant and a Spanish-language import label variant where a destination market needs one, and the mill and lot detail behind your cotton traceability file. We are not your importer of record, do not hold a foreign-trade zone admission, and cannot file a drawback claim on your behalf — those sit with your customs broker and your zone operator, and they are worth appointing before the first shipment rather than after it.

Sourcing Specifications at a Glance

Company	Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd. (厦门甲冠麒贸易有限公司) — sourcing and supply-chain management company, incorporated 2013; in the underwear trade since 2009
Business model	Sourcing and trading company — we neither own nor operate factories; every order runs on the long-term partner manufacturing lines in the Fujian knitwear corridor that best fit the fabric, quantity and delivery date
Location	Xiamen, Fujian Province, China — Jimei District, Xinglinwan Business Operation Center
Production base	Long-term partner factories across the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang knitwear corridor; our own liaison office inside the Jinjiang factory district since 2013
Categories	Men’s / women’s / kids’ knitted underwear, plus size to 5XL, thermal and baselayers, pajamas and sleepwear, sport bras
MOQ	2,000 pcs per style and colour (trial orders from 1,000 pcs on selected styles)
Sampling	7–10 days for counter samples; 12–18 days for fully custom development
Bulk lead	45–60 days after pre-production sample approval
Compliance	BSCI-audited partner factories; OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 certified materials; certificate numbers for the production sites on your order shared at quotation
QC	AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection on every order; shrinkage and spirality tested before bulk cutting; third-party inspection (SGS, Intertek, TÜV) welcome
Port & terms	Xiamen Port — FOB Xiamen standard (EXW Xiamen for Russia/CIS); CIF, CNF or DDP on request
Payment	30% T/T deposit, 70% against copy of B/L; L/C at sight for larger programmes. On some programmes the balance — or the full value — is collected before shipment, where the payment route, the trade term (for example EXW) or an order value too small to carry a post-shipment balance puts the risk on the supplier rather than on the buyer’s market; the sequence that applies is stated on the quotation.

How to Start a Programme from Miami

1. Send your design brief, spec sheet or reference sample — we review and respond within 48 hours
2. Receive fabric swatches, waistband options and a quotation within 3–5 business days
3. Approve counter samples (7–10 days) or full custom development samples (12–18 days)
4. Pre-production sample locks the measurement chart, then bulk runs 45–60 days with AQL 2.5 inline and final inspection
5. Shipment from Xiamen Port on your chosen term, with export documentation handled by our team

Contact us for a free quotation →

Prefer a third-party reference before you write? Our company profile and product showroom are public on Made-in-China.com, and our export shipping records are independently listed on Panjiva. Contact: [email protected] · WhatsApp +86 186 5081 3853.

Other Markets We Cover

This guide is one of a series written for buyers in different markets. The others cover the markets below — each page sets out what that market’s import rules, duty and shipping routes mean for an underwear programme sourced from China.

Europe — London · Paris · Barcelona · Madrid · Rome · Milan · Frankfurt · Hamburg · Amsterdam · Warsaw · Stockholm · Athens · Moscow · St Petersburg · Italy · the Netherlands · the Nordics

The Americas — New York · Los Angeles · Toronto · Mexico City · Santiago de Chile · Lima · São Paulo · Buenos Aires · Mexico · Canada

Asia-Pacific, Türkiye, the Gulf and Africa — Tokyo · Seoul · Singapore · Sydney · Melbourne · Auckland · Dubai · Istanbul · Johannesburg · the UAE

If you are still weighing up whether to buy through a sourcing company at all, start with the China underwear supplier hub, which sets out how a sourcing company differs from a single factory and what that changes for your programme. Buyers already based in China — Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Hong Kong, Ningbo, Yiwu or Xiamen — are covered by a separate set of city guides linked from the hub.

Last updated: 2026-10-16 · Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd. — OEM & ODM underwear sourcing partner

Unitex Underwear (Xiamen Unitex Trade Co., Ltd.) — OEM/ODM underwear sourcing and supply-chain partner in Xiamen, China; in the trade since 2009, incorporated in 2013. Based in the Xiamen–Quanzhou–Jinjiang knitwear cluster, Fujian Province, south-east China.