@ West Major
2025-05-25 20:37:59
I started West Major seven years ago for selfish reasons. I was tired of soul-sucking corporate jobs, working on projects I didn’t care about. I wanted to work for myself.
The idea to make western shirts didn’t come from market research. I just asked myself: If money weren’t a factor, what would I love to make every day?
To me? Western shirts. And a western brand.
I’ve loved this garment and style my whole life. In my late 20s, I decided - if I was going to do it, now was the time. And I wanted to do it in America, where western wear was born.
I didn’t realize I’d just signed up for one of the hardest missions in apparel - with no money, no connections, and zero experience. Making clothes in the U.S. is already hard. Tees and denim? Doable. But woven shirts? Brutal.
Shirting mills? Gone. Snap button manufacturers? Gone. The skilled single-needle labor needed to make a proper shirt? Almost gone. But the deeper I got, the more obsessed I became. I saw American-made western wear as the underdog and I wanted to fight for it.
Eventually, I found a factory willing to try, and we got started.
My first batch launched on Kickstarter. Most were returned. People loved the shirt - but the arms were too tight. I made improvements and, in 2019, re-shipped a better shirt to those original backers. Then I launched the site, moved back into my mom’s house to save money, and started bartending at night.
That fall/winter, we sold out of everything - around 300 shirts. I started 2020 with momentum, ready to build the brand I’d dreamed of since high school.
Then COVID hit. Factory shut down. Bar shut down. No job. No inventory. I was a 30-year-old, single guy living in my mom’s basement trying to start a clothing company. That year taught me how to survive.
The factory reopened that fall, we got shirts made, and sales grew a little.
In 2021, we grew 100% and passed six figures - but lost money. In 2022, we grew another 35% - and still lost money. Everyone told me to give up on American-made.
This path is a manual one. We source every material ourselves, coordinate delivery to the factory. Many things - like pearl snaps and shirting-weight fabric aren’t made here anymore. So we import them, get them through customs, wash the fabric, deliver everything to the sewers. They cut and sew the pieces based off my design and pattern. We pick them up, run our own QC, iron, fold, tag, and bag.
All of this has to be planned months in advance. It takes 3–6 months to make one shirt. If I want flannels for Q4, I have to start spending money I don’t have in Q1.
Or… I could move production overseas and get finished shirts delivered to my door in 30 days, at a fraction of the cost.
But every time I consider it, I lose interest. The energy and excitement behind the brand fades.
At that point, I was bartending four nights a week and pouring everything I had into the business. Constantly out of stock. I could only afford to make 1–3 shirts at a time to meet factory minimums.
Someone pointed out that my margins weren’t high enough - even if sales doubled, I’d still be underwater.
So in Q1 2023, I made what felt like a last-ditch move: raised prices to $200 and moved manufacturing to a tiny U.S. factory with higher prices, but no minimums.
I figured it was my final shot, and probably wouldn’t work.
But it did.
Revenue grew just 10%, but we released more shirts that year, and turned a small profit. In 2024, sales grew another 40%, and the profit grew too. After 5–6 years, I finally paid myself enough to quit bartending.
Now in 2025, we’re still growing. We manufacture with both that small factory and our original one again. We’re in about 14 stores across the U.S. (and one in Italy). All of them have re-ordered. Online sales are up. And we’ve pieced together our own supply chain to make it all happen. It’s not perfect. I want to make the highest quality shirt possible - and doing that in America is still very challenging, complicated, and expensive. But we’re getting there.
There’s another catch.
Recently, I learned from keyboard warriors on X, that to legally claim something is “American-made,” the FTC requires it to be “all or virtually all” made in the U.S. That means every material - fabric, buttons, snaps, labels - must be sourced domestically.
Most countries are more flexible. Switzerland’s “Swiss Made” requires 60% local manufacturing costs. France allows it if half the cost is French. Germany and Japan focus on where the core transformation happens. But in the U.S., it’s basically all or nothing.
That’s been a gut punch.
I can literally watch our shirts get made from scratch, by Americans, in America. Washing, cutting, fusing, sewing, pressing, trimming - all of it done here. And many of our materials are from here too. The labels. The interfacing.
But because our fabric or buttons aren’t made here (and can’t be sourced here), we’re not allowed to say “Made in U.S.A.” I guess?
I’m just trying to make a western shirt in America. I’m not trying to game the system - I just want to be transparent about what we’re doing, and why.
So here’s the moonshot dream:
To build a vertically integrated factory and make a 100% American-made western shirt - fabric, snaps, buttons, labels, and labor - all under one roof. Today, that’s not possible for a small brand like me. So for now, we cut and sew our shirts here, using the best materials we can find, sourcing abroad when we have to.
At the same time, I’m not afraid to use legendary fabrics from overseas mills - some of which have spent generations perfecting their craft. I want to make things here. And I want to make the best stuff possible. I believe we can do both one day. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
The brand is still small. I still work seven days a week. No breaks. But nothing has killed us yet. And we’ve still got 100,000 more shirts, ideas, and products to build here under the West Major banner before I die.