Ungalli Clothing Co. has concluded its 2025 Christmas retail season and transitioned to a new business model, operating exclusively as a wholesale company.
After 14 years of operating their printing and retail business on Cumberland Street, Hailey Buosi, who owns and operates Ungalli with her sister Bree Hollinsworth, said 2026 is a good time to make the change.
“We are not closing as a business,” Buosi said.
“We’re still going to stay open, and we’re not going anywhere. We’re still going to have our same location and we’ll still have a small selection available, but the retail store will be closed for the most part. We’ll be producing custom merchandise for other businesses and will be a supplier and distributor.”
Buosi said their wholesale business accounts for 90 per cent of their revenue, primarily from printing and manufacturing clothing for other companies, brands, and organizations.
“That’s the main part of our business now,” she said. “Retail has really slowed down the past few years, and we decided to really slow down that retail aspect and just be a wholesale operation. It just doesn’t make sense to put all the effort into the retail store.”
The sisters have moved their printing equipment into the production space and will continue to be open Monday to Friday with a very small selection of Thunder Bay shirts.
“We need a lot of office space, a lot of inventory storage, and we’ll have a showroom for all of our clothing products that can be customized with your own logo,” she said.
The decision to pivot to the wholesale business model was an easy one to make.
“It involves a big mix of things. Ever since COVID, just after that big push for supporting local, we see (the support) just went away, and it seems to get worse steadily every year. This was our worst Christmas season so far, in terms of retail sales,” Buosi said.
“The decision wasn’t a hard one to make, and we knew it was coming for a couple of years.”
She added that the economy and the current political climate have people worried about their money, and they don’t want to spend it.
“Also, the construction (of the roundabout) near our location this summer was really rough — although it looks great now and it was worth it,” she said. “Our location in general works perfectly as a wholesale setup for us, which is what we really need. But for retail, the area is just so bad with the homeless population, the violence and the gang activity going on. It keeps customers away, and it’s steadily getting worse as well. That was also a major factor for us.”
Buosi explained that much of the production of their clothing is manufactured in southern Ontario.
“We run the business from here, serving custom orders and we do (on-site) printing merchandise for other companies,” she said.
Garment and item printing is somewhat competitive in Thunder Bay, but Buosi says Ungalli differs from the rest.
“We’re really the only ones who are manufacturing our own clothing in Canada from sustainable materials, and it really is a completely different product than anything the others offer,” she pointed out. “And it’s Canadian homegrown.”
