You’ve priced out blank T-shirts for a fundraiser or a team order before. The jump from one supplier’s quote to the next never quite made sense. You assumed your order was simply too small to get the better number, so you paid what the sheet said and moved on.
The pricing clause Gildan used to box out competitors
The clause sat inside a standard wholesale contract between T-shirt manufacturer Gildan Activewear and wholesale distributor S&S Activewear. It barred Gildan from offering any of S&S’s competitors the same pricing and discounts S&S itself received. Wholesale buyers like you had no way to know the price gap existed. Contract terms like this one are never published alongside a price sheet.
The FTC said in an October 8, 2026 press release that it reviewed the arrangement under the Robinson-Patman Act. That decades-old law bars sellers from favoring one buyer over another on price. Gildan and S&S have since removed the restrictive clause from their agreement. Regulators rarely step into a private wholesale contract like this one, which made the closure notable on its own.
How S&S Activewear’s deal with Gildan shut out other distributors
You might not think about distributor contracts when you’re ordering blanks for a church group or a small shop. But this is where your price actually gets set, long before you ever ask for a quote. That’s true whether you’re stocking a boutique rack or ordering jerseys for a rec league team.
If one distributor locks in exclusive pricing, every rival distributor works from a worse number. That gap doesn’t stay with the distributors. It travels downstream and lands in the quote you compare before placing your own order. Smaller distributors can’t discount their way around a price they were never offered in the first place.
What the FTC’s Robinson-Patman Act review changed
After closing its investigation, the FTC said Gildan and S&S amended their agreement. The new terms say nothing in the agreement restricts Gildan’s discretion to set prices or offer support to other North American wholesale distributors. Gildan confirmed the change in a public letter the FTC posted. The agency didn’t fine either company or require payments to affected buyers.
The agency described the action as its first Robinson-Patman Act case resolved by a federal enforcement agency in more than two decades. It followed a similar settlement with distributor Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits the week before, targeting the same kind of favored-buyer contract term. Both cases signal that regulators are watching wholesale pricing terms more closely than they have in years.
Why this matters for the shop, team, or fundraiser order you place next
When one distributor can lock in pricing that competitors legally cannot match, you lose the benefit of a market actually competing for your business. The quotes you compared weren’t really independent. They were shaped by who had the exclusive deal and who didn’t. You had no way to negotiate around a disadvantage baked into someone else’s contract.
With that clause gone, other wholesale distributors can now compete on pricing Gildan previously reserved for one partner. For a small shop, a team parent, or a reseller working on thin margins, that’s a market with room to move again. That’s a meaningful shift for anyone sourcing blanks in bulk, not just the big retail chains.
This was never a referendum on how well you negotiated or which supplier you happened to pick. It was a pricing structure built to protect one company’s biggest account, and it showed up in every quote you compared. You get to shop around again, however that looks for you.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Womens Overview editors prior to publication.