Selling Both Sides of the Border: A Canadian Brand in the US Market
By The Velocity Wear Team
The United States is the obvious expansion market for a Canadian clothing brand — adjacent, enormous, and culturally close enough that the product usually needs no adaptation. That familiarity is exactly why brands cross the border underprepared, because the things that differ are administrative rather than obvious.
Your label is not compliant down there
A Canadian-compliant label carries bilingual fibre content and a dealer identity or CA number. A US-compliant label needs fibre content, the identity of the responsible company — a full business name or an FTC-issued RN — country of origin, and permanently attached care instructions, which are mandatory in the US and voluntary in Canada.
The two sets do not conflict, so the practical answer is one label satisfying both: bilingual fibre content, an identity valid in each market, origin, and care. Decide this before the run, because labels are made during production and adding a market afterwards means new labels on new stock.
Sizing expectations differ more than you think
US apparel sizing runs generous at the same letter relative to most other markets, and US buyers navigate by learned expectation. The same garment can be a medium in one market's convention and read as running small in the other.
The fix is not relabelling, it is publishing flat measurements — chest, body length, sleeve, shoulder — in inches for the US audience and centimetres alongside. It removes the ambiguity that letters create and it is the single highest-return change a brand can make when entering a new market.
Sales tax becomes a different problem
Canadian sales tax follows a national structure with provincial variation. American sales tax is administered state by state, sometimes locally, with economic nexus thresholds that differ by state — and clothing is treated specially in several of them, exempt in some and exempt under a price threshold in others.
Selling into the US does not automatically create an obligation everywhere, but growth creates it somewhere. Track sales by state from the first order so you can see thresholds approaching rather than discovering them through correspondence.
Fulfilment and the freight decision
- Shipping individual parcels across the border is simple, slow and expensive per unit, and your customer may face charges on delivery they did not expect.
- Holding stock with a US fulfilment partner concentrates the import into one bulk movement and gives your American customers domestic delivery speeds and no surprise charges.
- The second option costs more to set up and is usually right the moment US volume is consistent rather than occasional.
- A third option worth considering: shipping production directly to a US location rather than importing into Canada and re-exporting, which avoids paying to move goods across the border twice.
Trademarks are territorial
A Canadian registration does not protect you in the United States. Before building a US following, search the USPTO register in class 25 for your name and obvious variants. Discovering a conflict after you have spent a year building recognition is a considerably worse outcome than discovering it in an afternoon.
Order for the market you are actually testing
The temptation on entering a new market is to order a serious inventory position to support it. Resist that until you have evidence. A 20-piece run per design, with mixed sizes included and worldwide tracked delivery, is enough to find out whether US customers buy your product before committing to a fulfilment arrangement and a stock position to fill it.
Then scale when the data says so. That sequence — test, learn, commit — is the same one that works domestically, and crossing a border does not change it.
