Toronto is 63 days away. For Canadian apparel and textile buyers, that number means something specific: there are 63 days left to walk into Apparel Textile Sourcing Canada with a clear sourcing problem to solve, instead of showing up to browse and hoping something interesting turns up.
The buyers who get the most out of ATS are never the ones who arrive with no agenda. They are the ones who did the work before the show — who know exactly which supply chain gaps they are trying to close, which regions they need to explore, and which conversations they want to have before the floor gets busy. That preparation takes time. Sixty-three days is enough. Barely.
Start With What Is Actually Broken in Your Supply Chain
The CUSMA review is underway. Oil is at $95 a barrel today, pushing freight costs up across every corridor. The Red Sea disruption is still adding transit time for goods coming from Asia. And Canadian retail is still absorbing the fallout from the Hudson’s Bay collapse, with buyers actively searching for new supplier relationships to fill categories that lost their primary retail home.
Against that backdrop, the most useful thing a buyer can do before ATS is honest: write down the two or three supply chain problems that keep coming up. The supplier that cannot scale when you need them to. The product category where you are too dependent on a single country. The compliance requirement that your current suppliers cannot meet. Those are the conversations worth having on the ATS floor, and knowing them in advance means you spend your time on the right booths instead of wandering.
Know Which Regions You Need to Explore
ATS Toronto brings verified manufacturers from across the globe: Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Honduras, China, and more. Each region has a different profile in terms of product specialization, minimum order quantities, lead times, and compliance credentials. Walking the floor without knowing which regions are most relevant to your sourcing needs is like going to a grocery store without a list — you will spend money, but probably not on the right things.
If your concern is CUSMA exposure, the suppliers from Asia and Latin America are the ones who sit entirely outside that framework. If your concern is sustainability credentials, Bangladesh’s LEED-certified factories and Egypt’s OEKO-TEX certified mills are worth prioritizing. If your concern is speed to market, Honduras’s three-day shipping window to North American ports changes the conversation entirely. Knowing your priority before you arrive makes every conversation more productive.
The Outdoor Pavilion Is New This Year
For buyers sourcing activewear, outdoor apparel, or technical textiles, the 2026 Toronto show is launching a first-of-its-kind Outdoor Pavilion: a dedicated sourcing zone with six categories and dozens of specialized suppliers all in one spot. If that is your category, it is worth building your show schedule around that section specifically. Specialized suppliers in a dedicated zone means less time filtering through irrelevant booths and more time in the conversations that actually matter.
Register Now, Not the Week Before
ATS is free to attend, which makes it easy to put registration off. That is a mistake. Registered buyers get access to the exhibitor directory in advance, which is how you build your booth priority list before the show opens. Walking in on day one knowing exactly which suppliers you want to see first is a completely different experience from figuring it out on the floor.
Sixty-three days. One free registration. A lot of sourcing problems that could be solved in Toronto this September.
Register now at www.appareltextilesourcing.com. Toronto, September 23 to 25 at The International Centre. Montreal, September 28. Free to attend.
