Underwear Supplier for Toronto Buyers: OEM Sourcing from China

Toronto is the commercial centre of the Canadian apparel trade — the buying offices, the licensing businesses and most of the private-label programmes are here, even when the goods land in Vancouver or Montreal and travel by rail. 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.

What a Toronto Brief Contains That a US Brief Does Not

The first difference a Toronto buyer brings to a brief is the label. Canadian textile labelling requires the information to be bilingual, in English and French, and it requires the identity of a Canadian dealer — the party responsible for the product in Canada — with a Canadian postal address. A programme that is already producing for the United States cannot simply reuse the US artwork: the fibre declaration has to appear in French as well, and a Canadian dealer has to be named. That single change is the most common reason a Canadian launch slips a few weeks behind a US one, and it is entirely avoidable if the label is specified at sampling.

The second difference is Quebec. The Charter of the French Language has been reinforced by Bill 96, and the provisions governing trademarks on packaging and labelling took effect on 1 June 2025. The practical consequence for an apparel label is that French has to be at least as prominent as any other language, and a mark that is not a registered trademark generally needs a French version on the product or its packaging where the product is sold in Quebec. Toronto-based businesses selling nationally are caught by this as soon as they ship into Quebec, so the sensible approach for any national Canadian range is one bilingual label that satisfies federal and Quebec requirements at the same time.

The third difference is scale and seasonality. The Canadian market is roughly a tenth the size of the US market, with a shorter selling season, so first orders tend to be smaller and the reorder logic more conservative. Buyers frequently start with two or three styles rather than a full range, which makes the trial-order route on selected styles more relevant than it is in Los Angeles.

Xiamen to Toronto: West Coast Port Plus Rail, or Via Montreal

Toronto is inland, so the routing question is real. The two workable structures are a West Coast discharge at Vancouver or Prince Rupert followed by Canadian National or Canadian Pacific Kansas City rail to Toronto, or an East Coast discharge at Montreal with a much shorter rail leg. West Coast trans-Pacific transit from Xiamen runs in the region of sixteen to twenty days port to port, and the rail leg to Toronto normally adds five to seven days on top, with a terminal and dwell allowance at each end. Allow roughly thirty to forty days door to door, and treat rail dwell as the variable that moves most, particularly through the winter.

Routing through Montreal involves a longer ocean leg — an East Coast service effectively goes round through the Panama Canal or across the Atlantic — but a shorter and generally less congested inland leg. Which of the two is cheaper depends on the month, the carrier and your volume; it is a comparison worth running rather than assuming, and we will give you the two options side by side on the quotation rather than a single number.

Air freight lands at Toronto Pearson. Xiamen to Toronto is normally a one-stop routing through Shanghai, Hong Kong or a transpacific gateway, with total airport-to-airport time in the region of two to four days. It is the right mode for a sample set that has to be in a buyer’s hand for a line review, and the wrong mode for bulk underwear.

Canadian Labelling, Duty, HST and CARM

The labelling framework is the Textile Labelling Act and the Textile Labelling and Advertising Regulations. The label must state the fibre content by generic name and percentage, the identity of the dealer — the Canadian company responsible for the product — and, in practice for apparel, care instructions in the form of the standard care symbols. The content must be in both English and French, and it must be permanently attached to the garment. Country of origin is a separate matter: it is declared to the Canada Border Services Agency on entry, and any origin claim printed on the product has to be accurate.

On cost, Canada applies duty at the Most-Favoured-Nation rate because there is no free trade agreement with China. For knitted cotton underwear the rate sits in the high teens — in the region of eighteen percent — and it is assessed on the value for duty, which is normally the price paid or payable with specified adjustments rather than a CIF figure. On top of duty, the federal Goods and Services Tax is five percent, and Ontario applies the Harmonized Sales Tax at thirteen percent rather than a separate provincial retail sales tax. A GST-registered importer recovers the tax through its returns; a non-resident selling into Canada does not, which is why the importer-of-record question comes up early in most Canadian programmes.

Two operational points are worth building into the plan. First, Canadian importers file through the CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management portal, and registration and delegation of authority to a broker is a step that has to be completed before the first entry rather than on the day the vessel berths. Second, apparel is a sector where the Special Import Measures Act can apply, so if a particular product category attracts an anti-dumping finding, the duty position can change materially. We are not your customs adviser, but we will tell you at quotation which commodity code we are declaring the goods under so that your broker can check it against the current measures.

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 handle 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.

We state only what we can evidence — amfori BSCI social audits and OEKO-TEX Standard 100 at the partner sites; anything else a retail supplier code requires is confirmed per order. We are not your Canadian importer of record or your dealer of record on the label — that has to be a Canadian entity, which is normally your own company or a subsidiary. What we do is make sure the bilingual label carries your dealer details and care symbols correctly, sewn in at production, and that the invoice and packing documentation matches what your broker files through CARM. Because we are not a manufacturer, a Toronto programme can be placed on whichever partner line suits the fabric and the quantity, instead of being tied to one plant’s manufacturing schedule.

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 Toronto

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 · Miami · 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: 2026-10-17 · 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.