“America doesn’t need another faceless, institutional apparel company,” says American Apparel founder Dov Charney. “They need an apparel company that gets it and does it right.”

When Charney was in prep school, he began bootlegging garbage bags of K-Mart t-shirts from the U.S. back to his native Canada. Today, Charney heads American Apparel, the brand-free, sweatshop-free, made-in-America clothing chain he founded in 1997 that is taking the world by storm. Charney was named Ernst & Young’s 2004 Entrepreneur of the Year and one of Details magazine’s 50 most powerful people under 42. American Apparel is now the largest t-shirt manufacturer in the U.S., but Charney’s mission goes beyond creating cool clothes.

“Give me the chance of going to Harvard or being there when Google started and I want to be there making $3 an hour sweeping their floors. Or Apple when Steve Jobs started it,” says Charney. “Maybe I’m delusional but that’s what I think American Apparel is.” For Charney, the success of American Apparel has just begun. But how did he get to where he is today? How did a Jewish Canadian college dropout become the CEO of one of the most revered and fastest-growing companies in America?

“I think I was just born overcharged…I was such a crazy kid in elementary school I was almost kicked out.

My friends were selling these great bootleg t-shirts in front of the Forum. I was going to prep school in the States at the time and the t-shirts there were a bit different, better for the silk-screening process. So I started buying t-shirts at K-mart and bringing them to Canada in garbage bags on the train.

They took me down to Station 10, which doesn’t exist anymore, and after a couple of hours of me yelling, ‘Monsieur, monsieur!’ they let me out and gave me back my cash and my shirts. So what did I do? Headed straight for the Cock ‘n Bull to try and unload the rest of them.

I was barley 18. So that was the beginning and I guess because I lost money I felt compelled to keep hustling.

I called up a guy I trust and asked, ‘Who’s the best out there at organizing a factory?’ He said Marty. So I called him on a Saturday and said, ‘Dude, my name’s Dov and I need help.’ He started Monday; that’s the way I operate.

I started bringing like 5,000, 10,000 t-shirts at a time, on a U-Haul truck in the summer, and I developed a kind of importing business, from the United States to Canada. That’s why it’s called American Apparel.

When you believe in what you’re doing, that’s the first thing. And you have to be resilient, because people are going to try to knock you down. 

It’s sickening money, man. We’re minting money. It’s t-shirts that look good, t-shirts that feel good, and t-shirts that are made in a non-exploitative setting. We designed the rate in such a way that the average person should be able to make $100 a day, that’s our target. We want to pay more than the prevailing wages in Los Angeles, because we want to have the happiest work force we can have. I have the highest-paid apparel workers in the world. 

As a result of this system, we’re able to compete with China and kick ass the American way. It’s less expensive, for me, the way we do business, to manufacture here in the United States. There’s a high cost to going offshore. If you’re working with a supplier in China, you’ve got to work months in advance. If you’re working with your own factory, you can wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, let’s make 10,000 tank tops today.’ 

I think for a designer to be in his underwear when he’s designing underwear is quite common. And I’m in my underwear in my office all the time. I frequently drop my pants to show people my new product. 

Passion. That’s it. When you believe in what you’re doing, that’s it. I want to be remembered as one of the great CEOs of our time and of my generation. And I think that I’m gonna make them proud. That’s my plan.

We plan to continue to behave in a contrarian matter. This creative environment is what got us to this point. We certainly aren’t going to stop doing it now after we created a highly profitable company.“