Bayard Winthrop has long been intrigued by the idea of creating "Made in the USA" merchandise, but as a manufacturing veteran, he didn't think the business climate was right for it even two or three years ago. Today, as he launches new men’s clothing startup American Giant as an online-only operation, he is betting that it is.

From the increase in e-commerce versus brick-and-mortar sales to the growing desire among consumers to buy American-made goods, the reasons to launch a digital sales site stacked up as neatly as, well, a stack of sweatshirts—which, incidentally, is the bulk of what he is selling online for the site’s debut.

“I’ve always been interested about the relative merits of manufacturing nearby in the U.S., where you have greater control over the elements of making goods versus the cost benefits of moving manufacturing over to Asia,” Winthrop told Portfolio.com.

American Giant offers casual basic men’s apparel, including sweatshirts and hoodies, all made in the San Francisco Bay area, for prices ranging from $59 to $89. Made out of 100 percent high-quality cotton, the pieces pay attention to the nitty-gritty details, such as ribbed side panels that tailor the shirts to the wearer’s body, the quality of the fleece-like cotton inside, and heavy-duty zippers and snaps designed with the American Giant logo. Winthrop says that he simply couldn’t find anything of the same quality in U.S. stores. The only thing that came close, in his opinion, was a $109 sweatshirt made in China and sold at J. Crew as part of its Wallace & Barnes collection.

“If you’re 30-plus guy in the U.S., you’ve got a lot of basics in the wardrobe, that’s 90 percent of what you wear,” he says. Yet the only real options for buying those basics are to go to big chains such as Banana Republic, J. Crew, Old Navy, the Gap—all brands that Winthrop says have “lost their resonance” with consumers and manufacture their products overseas, resulting in poorer quality.

The sweatshirt line is the first in what will become a full line of men’s premium basics, which will be rolled out in phases roughly every six weeks, with T-shirts among the items to be added.