Importing Your First Apparel Shipment Into Canada
By The Velocity Wear Team
Most Canadian brands import their first production run without consciously deciding to. The garments are made overseas, they arrive, and somewhere along the way a customs entry happened in somebody's name. It is worth an afternoon understanding whose, and what it means, before the shipment is at the border.
You need an import account
To import commercially into Canada you generally need a business number with an import-export program account. This is a registration with the Canada Revenue Agency, and it is what identifies you to the Canada Border Services Agency as the importer.
It is administrative rather than difficult, and it is the sort of thing that takes a week when you have time and is a crisis when the container is waiting. Do it before the goods ship, not after.
Classification is where apparel gets fiddly
Every imported item has a tariff classification, and that classification determines the duty rate. Apparel classifications are unusually granular — knitted versus woven, fibre composition, garment type, sometimes intended wearer. A cotton knit tee and a polyester woven shirt are nowhere near each other in the schedule.
This matters because textile duty rates are on the higher end of the range in most regimes, and a wrong classification is correctable retrospectively with interest when somebody notices. Ask your supplier what code they classify the garment under, and verify it against the current Canadian tariff schedule for your product. The classification is a factual determination about what the garment is, not a choice.
Origin, and why it is not where it shipped from
Duty depends on origin as well as classification, and origin is decided by rules of origin, not by the port the container left from. For apparel those rules typically turn on where operations like knitting or weaving and making up occurred, rather than final assembly alone.
If you are relying on a trade agreement for preferential treatment, ask your supplier explicitly whether the goods meet the origin rules and whether they will provide the documentation. The paperwork is the basis of the claim; without it the claim does not exist.
What you will be asked for
- A commercial invoice with accurate descriptions, quantities, unit values, totals and country of origin.
- A packing list, used to reconcile what physically arrived against what was declared.
- The tariff classification for each line.
- Origin documentation if you are claiming preferential treatment.
- Payment arrangements for duty and GST on import, which is collected at the border rather than later.
Use a customs broker
For a first commercial textile shipment, a licensed customs broker is straightforwardly worth the fee. They file entries daily, they know the classification traps in apparel, and the errors they prevent cost considerably more than they charge.
Attempting to self-clear a first commercial entry to save a few hundred dollars is a false economy that a remarkable number of founders try exactly once.
What buying delivered removes
If your supplier quotes delivered with duty paid, all of the above becomes their responsibility for that shipment. You compare one number to another number and the goods appear. It is usually not the theoretical cheapest route, and for a first order it removes an entire category of expensive mistake.
The trade-off is visibility: a delivered price bundles freight, duty and handling, so you cannot see which component moved when the number changes. As volumes grow, unbundling becomes more attractive. On run one it rarely does.
Plan the calendar backwards
Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval. Freight and clearance sit on top, and their variance is much larger than production's. Build the schedule backwards from the date you need stock and add real buffer, because the most expensive decision in a first import is air freight taken at the last minute to rescue a launch.
