23 days ago
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Posted On: July 3rd 2026, 03:11 pm
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FULL EDITORIAL with @softgoodsmanufacturing - link in bio |
In the five years we’ve been running this newsletter, some of our favorite stories have been about makers.
Not the people who put their name on the label, but the ones who actually build the sh*t. Josh York is one of those people.
You’ve probably worn something that came out of his factory without ever knowing it; the tee under someone else’s logo, the fleece with a hotel’s name on the care tag.
Soft Goods white-labels for some of the most respected names in American menswear, and does it all out of a factory in Corktown, one of Detroit’s oldest neighborhoods.
Josh has been making T-shirts since he was 12. PowerPoint graphics, iron-on transfers, his mom helping him cut them out, sold from his locker in high school. Later it was a screen-printing press in his parents’ basement laundry room, a supply chain degree from Michigan State, and stints buying screws for airplane wings at Boeing and six million pairs of boys’ underwear at Abercrombie. None of it scratched the itch.
He wanted to actually make something. It took a health scare, a spinal tumor found right after graduation, and a corporate wake-up call to push him home to go all in.
What he built is rare. A domestic factory that doesn’t just make its own product but keeps five others busy across Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois; roughly 40 people making clothes because of what Josh set in motion. That’s what “Made in USA” means to him. Not a marketing slogan stamped on a hangtag, but the jobs it keeps here.
He’s quick to tell you he’s not a designer, he’s a business owner, and his mantra is almost boringly simple: do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. In this industry, that turns out to be the hard part.
Our conversation covered all of it.
Growing up making band tees, the Aaron Levine story that started with a cold email to Michael Williams, what it takes to build credibility with a factory in Detroit, and why the next ten years are about turning Soft Goods from a maker-for-hire into a brand that lasts.
THANK YOU to @lukesteppey for the photos 📸
In the five years we’ve been running this newsletter, some of our favorite stories have been about makers.
Not the people who put their name on the label, but the ones who actually build the sh*t. Josh York is one of those people.
You’ve probably worn something that came out of his factory without ever knowing it; the tee under someone else’s logo, the fleece with a hotel’s name on the care tag.
Soft Goods white-labels for some of the most respected names in American menswear, and does it all out of a factory in Corktown, one of Detroit’s oldest neighborhoods.
Josh has been making T-shirts since he was 12. PowerPoint graphics, iron-on transfers, his mom helping him cut them out, sold from his locker in high school. Later it was a screen-printing press in his parents’ basement laundry room, a supply chain degree from Michigan State, and stints buying screws for airplane wings at Boeing and six million pairs of boys’ underwear at Abercrombie. None of it scratched the itch.
He wanted to actually make something. It took a health scare, a spinal tumor found right after graduation, and a corporate wake-up call to push him home to go all in.
What he built is rare. A domestic factory that doesn’t just make its own product but keeps five others busy across Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois; roughly 40 people making clothes because of what Josh set in motion. That’s what “Made in USA” means to him. Not a marketing slogan stamped on a hangtag, but the jobs it keeps here.
He’s quick to tell you he’s not a designer, he’s a business owner, and his mantra is almost boringly simple: do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. In this industry, that turns out to be the hard part.
Our conversation covered all of it.
Growing up making band tees, the Aaron Levine story that started with a cold email to Michael Williams, what it takes to build credibility with a factory in Detroit, and why the next ten years are about turning Soft Goods from a maker-for-hire into a brand that lasts.
THANK YOU to @lukesteppey for the photos 📸
Comments (42)
17 days agojillsettineri
A love hearing about Michigan companies! Congratulations on building your business!
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