Last Christmas, Sears had a brisk seller in the Bionic Wrench, an award-winning, patented tool with spiffy lime green accents. This holiday season, though, Sears has a special display for its own wrench, in the red and black colors of its house brand, Craftsman.
The Bionic Wrench is distinguished by its gripping mechanism, a circle of metal prongs that, inspired by the shutter in a single-lens reflex camera, descend evenly to lock onto almost any nut or bolt.
Since Sears has halted new orders, the Pennsylvania company that makes the Bionic Wrench has had to lay off 31 workers, said Keith Hammer, the project manager at the company, Penn United Technologies. “And that’s not to mention our suppliers,” he added.
Mr. Brown sees a broader issue than just the fate of his wrench. “Our situation is an example of why we’re not getting jobs out of innovation,” he said. “When people get the innovation, they go right offshore. What happened to me is what happened to so many people so many times, and we just don’t talk about it.”
Inventors typically spend $10,000 to $50,000 to obtain the type of patent Mr. Brown has on the wrench, said John S. Pratt, a patent expert at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Atlanta. Though he said he could not comment on the merits of Mr. Brown’s potential suit, patent infringement cases can be especially difficult in the tool field, where many improvements are incremental, Mr. Pratt explained.
A defendant in such a case would most likely argue that either the tool did not warrant a patent in the first place, or that its own product did not violate the patent.
The fact that Sears made some changes to the wrench’s design, like making the grooves that allow the metal prongs to slide back and forth visible instead of hidden, will make the case more challenging, he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Sears isn’t particularly careful about breach of patent, so there’s probably another side to the story,” he said.
After patenting the wrench in 2005, Mr. Brown formed a company,
LoggerHead Tools, to bring it to market, making a point of having it made in the United States.
The Bionic Wrench was greeted with enthusiasm at trade shows and in industrial design competitions, and the company survived the downturn in 2008. Mr. Brown resisted overtures from large chain stores that wanted to sell the tool under their proprietary brand, he said, and rejected the lure of cheaper manufacturing in China. “I was raised a different way,” he said.
The tool sold fairly well on its own — LoggerHead has shipped 1.75 million of them — but
Mr. Brown, 56, who teaches industrial design at Northwestern University, says LoggerHead operated on a shoestring and he plowed much of the profit back into the company. “You cannot have big offices and fancy cars and everybody with an administrative assistant, because we are competing with China,” he said.
In 2009, LoggerHead hit pay dirt when Sears agreed to do a test sale. The product sold out, Mr. Brown said, and Sears ordered 75,000 Bionic Wrenches the next year. In exchange Mr. Brown agreed not to sell the wrench to Sears’s competitors, including Home Depot and Lowe’s.
In 2011, sales at Sears increased again, far outpacing LoggerHead’s other outlets like the QVC shopping channel and smaller hardware stores. But LoggerHead’s profit margin remained small, in part because it produced a television commercial and paid Sears to show it.
The Sears Holdings Company, which owns the Craftsman brand, declined multiple requests to comment on the Bionic Wrench or the Max Axess Wrench. The company would not answer questions about patent infringement or the volume of sales.
But in a string of e-mails provided by Mr. Brown, the buyer at Sears who had the LoggerHead account wrote, making liberal use of exclamation points, that the wrench’s holiday sales last year exceeded its target by 23 percent.
In the manufacturing world, lead time can determine price, and from the beginning cost was a particular issue for the Bionic Wrench, because of the competition from China. A 2006 article in The Wall Street Journal was headlined, “Wrench Wins Awards, but Is It Priced Too High to Be a Hit?”
According to Mr. Brown’s account of his dealings with Sears, the chain was pleased with the tool’s performance and agreed to place an order for 2012 in plenty of time to keep the cost low. Then his buyer at Sears changed and that agreement seemed to get lost in a new round of haggling. When the order for Father’s Day
finally cam
e, Mr. Brown said, it was too late to guarantee the lower price. He refused the order.
Sears responded by agreeing to the higher price. But when it came time for the Christmas holiday order, negotiations stalled once more, again pushing LoggerHead past the deadline to get the best price, according to Mr. Brown.
“We were sitting there going, ‘Why do they want Father’s Day so bad but they won’t commit for Christmas?’ ” Mr. Brown said. Now he believes that the company had already placed its order for the Craftsman version.
In late September, Mr. Brown said, his suspicions were confirmed. LoggerHead got a “customer feedback” e-mail from Mr. Craig, the tool connoisseur, describing the new Max Axess wrenches. “Sadly, they are made in China,” Mr. Craig wrote. “Can you tell me if LoggerHead has authorized these?”
Craftsman has come under fire before, accused of misleading customers into thinking that its tools are made in America and for stealing intellectual property. In one case, Sears spent two decades defending itself against a claim by Peter M. Roberts, who as a young Sears employee had, on his own time, invented a type of socket wrench.
Mr. Roberts told the court that Sears had played down the value of his invention, paid him $10,000 for the rights, and then made tens of millions of dollars. He eventually received settlements of less than $10 million, according to news reports.
In another, more recent case led by Lee Grossman, Mr. Brown’s lawyer, a judge awarded $25 million to the maker of a tool called the Rotozip who said he had disclosed trade secrets to Sears in an attempt to get the store to carry a new version of the tool.
Sears, a jury decided, took the trade secrets and had the tool made abroad for Craftsman.
“You have LoggerHead out, Dan Brown out, and dozens of American workers laid off — all in the name of profits for Sears,” Mr. Grossman said.
LoggerHead’s lawsuit, Mr. Brown said, will most likely include claims that Sears interfered with the company’s ability to do business with other stores.
“I’m in favor of free trade,” Mr. Brown said. “The person who’s out-innovated loses. But it’s destructive when someone competes but doesn’t out-innovate, they just produce it in a different market without regard to safety codes and human conditions.”
The company that makes the Max Axess wrench and other tools for Craftsman, the
Apex Tool Group, is being acquired by Bain Capital, the company founded by Mitt Romney, in a $1.6 billion deal.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Bain was criticized on the grounds that it encouraged outsourcing by companies it buys at the expense of American workers. Apex makes many of its tools overseas. A company spokesman referred all questions to Sears.
Mr. Brown and his lawyer say they believe they have a solid case against Sears, but it could take years to litigate. “What happens to us in the meantime?” Mr. Brown asked.
Mr. Brown is also concerned that while he fights in court, Sears can undercut the price of his wrench.
For now at least, Sears still has some of Mr. Brown’s wrenches in its inventory. On the Sears Web site, the Craftsman and the LoggerHead wrenches are listed at the same regular price, $24.99 for the 8-inch version, and today both are on sale. But for at least a few days in recent weeks, only the Craftsman version was on sale, for $19.99.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 9, 2012, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: An Innovator vs. a Follower.
New U.S. Address in Foxconn's Future? Don't Bet On It
UncategorizedNovember 9, 2012
I was skeptical about this story — which talks about production of LCD TVs, not iPhones — and that might have been the end of it.
But maybe it’s not quite as crazy as it seems. A spokeswoman for Foxconn told me in an e-mail that the company “already has multiple facilities based in the U.S.” but she also went on to say that “there are no current plans to expand our operations there at this time.”
Suppose, however, you want to make the case that once the camel gets its nose under the tent, why should it stop there? I’d imagine Exhibit A could include the comments offered up the other day by Foxconn’s Chairman Terry Gou, who revealed just how badly the company was straining just to keep pace with current iPhone production demands. Any extra manufacturing capacity coming online would go a long way to help relieve that crunch. Then there’s the political benefit of turning out products with “Made in the U.S.A.” labels stamped on the back, no small benefit given the touchy state of U.S.-Sino trade relations these days. And it is entirely possible that Foxconn is getting prodded by one of its major customers because of those same political considerations.
And more jobs equals good politics. The two cities mentioned by Digitimes are Detroit and Los Angeles where both Mayors Dave Bing and Antonio Villaraigosa would be eager to put out the welcome mat: Los Angeles, with an 11.2 percent unemployment rate and Detroit, where 18.1 percent of the labor force is out of work, are doing far worse than the national average of just under 8 percent.
“If you want to make things in America, we know how to make things,” said Ned Staebler, formerly of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and now Wayne State’s vice president for economic development.
Michigan business circles have indeed been buzzing about “a big announcement” related to technology, according to Staebler, though it’s still unclear whether we’re talking about Foxconn or some other company. Word has it that the site in question might ultimately wind up in one of Detroit’s suburbs. The announcement also may have more to do with software than hardware. We’ll know more in a few weeks.
Now to the question whether Foxconn would ever employ Americans to put together iPhones or iPads in the U.S. The skeptics will note that while Foxconn has already crossed the Pacific to Brazil — last year it began operating an assembly plant not far from Sao Paulo in a the bedroom community of Jundai — average wages in Brazil remain lower than in the U.S. This becomes a case where math really matters. Foxconn — and by extension its bigger clients, like Apple — rake in fat profits from Chinese sites where hourly wages and production costs are much lower than those in the United States. (Foxconn pays its assembly workers a monthly wage of 2,500 RMB ($400).) It’s hard to imagine that tax breaks from Detroit, L.A. or Oshkosh would be enough to compensate for taking lower margins just for the “benefit” of being on U.S. soil. Economists have estimated that paying a U.S. labor force to make the devices” would add between $65 to $100 to the cost of an iPhone.
“It would be a positive if Apple made at least some percentage of their products (here) and I would like to see them do that,” notes Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a Washington D.C.-based labor rights monitoring organization. “But it would be a huge leap from their current manufacturing policy… and would be a radical change You cannot replicate Chinese working conditions in LA.”
Foxconn would also have a tough selling job to win hearts and minds given its spotty labor history, which is rife with complaints about worker conditions in factories making iPhones and other high-volume tech products. As much as Foxconn would want to keep the unions out, a new U.S. factory would still have to conform to local labor standards. Would it be worth the hassle?
Nothing is out of the realm of possibilities, but those aren’t the sorts of jobs that the political class says America ought to invest in for the future. As President Obama noted during his third debate with Mitt Romney, echoing what the late Steve Jobs told him during a dinner in Silicon Valley in 2011, “There are some jobs that are not going to come back, because they’re low-wage, low-skill jobs.”
And in this case, it may be a good enough reason not to invite them back. To be continued.
Popular Wrench Fights a Chinese Rival
UncategorizedNovember 8, 2012
The tools have one significant difference, Mr. Craig noted. The Bionic Wrench is made in the United States. The Max Axess wrench is made in China.
The shift at Sears from a tool invented and manufactured in the United States to a very similar one made offshore has already led to a loss of American jobs and a brewing patent battle.
The story of the Bionic Wrench versus Craftsman, which bills itself as “America’s most trusted tool brand,” also raises questions about how much entrepreneurs and innovators, who rely on the country’s intellectual property laws, can protect themselves. For the little guy, court battles are inevitably time-consuming and costly, no matter the outcome.
Still, the inventor of the Bionic Wrench is determined to fight. He is Dan Brown, an industrial designer in Chicago who came up with the wrench after watching his son try to work on a lawn mower. Mr. Brown says he believes that the Max Axess wrench copies his own and he is planning to file suit against Sears, which declined to answer any questions about the wrenches for this article.
Since Sears has halted new orders, the Pennsylvania company that makes the Bionic Wrench has had to lay off 31 workers, said Keith Hammer, the project manager at the company, Penn United Technologies. “And that’s not to mention our suppliers,” he added.
Mr. Brown sees a broader issue than just the fate of his wrench. “Our situation is an example of why we’re not getting jobs out of innovation,” he said. “When people get the innovation, they go right offshore. What happened to me is what happened to so many people so many times, and we just don’t talk about it.”
Inventors typically spend $10,000 to $50,000 to obtain the type of patent Mr. Brown has on the wrench, said John S. Pratt, a patent expert at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Atlanta. Though he said he could not comment on the merits of Mr. Brown’s potential suit, patent infringement cases can be especially difficult in the tool field, where many improvements are incremental, Mr. Pratt explained.
A defendant in such a case would most likely argue that either the tool did not warrant a patent in the first place, or that its own product did not violate the patent.
The fact that Sears made some changes to the wrench’s design, like making the grooves that allow the metal prongs to slide back and forth visible instead of hidden, will make the case more challenging, he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine that Sears isn’t particularly careful about breach of patent, so there’s probably another side to the story,” he said.
After patenting the wrench in 2005, Mr. Brown formed a company, LoggerHead Tools, to bring it to market, making a point of having it made in the United States.
The Bionic Wrench was greeted with enthusiasm at trade shows and in industrial design competitions, and the company survived the downturn in 2008. Mr. Brown resisted overtures from large chain stores that wanted to sell the tool under their proprietary brand, he said, and rejected the lure of cheaper manufacturing in China. “I was raised a different way,” he said.
The tool sold fairly well on its own — LoggerHead has shipped 1.75 million of them — but Mr. Brown, 56, who teaches industrial design at Northwestern University, says LoggerHead operated on a shoestring and he plowed much of the profit back into the company. “You cannot have big offices and fancy cars and everybody with an administrative assistant, because we are competing with China,” he said.
In 2009, LoggerHead hit pay dirt when Sears agreed to do a test sale. The product sold out, Mr. Brown said, and Sears ordered 75,000 Bionic Wrenches the next year. In exchange Mr. Brown agreed not to sell the wrench to Sears’s competitors, including Home Depot and Lowe’s.
In 2011, sales at Sears increased again, far outpacing LoggerHead’s other outlets like the QVC shopping channel and smaller hardware stores. But LoggerHead’s profit margin remained small, in part because it produced a television commercial and paid Sears to show it.
The Sears Holdings Company, which owns the Craftsman brand, declined multiple requests to comment on the Bionic Wrench or the Max Axess Wrench. The company would not answer questions about patent infringement or the volume of sales.
But in a string of e-mails provided by Mr. Brown, the buyer at Sears who had the LoggerHead account wrote, making liberal use of exclamation points, that the wrench’s holiday sales last year exceeded its target by 23 percent.
In the manufacturing world, lead time can determine price, and from the beginning cost was a particular issue for the Bionic Wrench, because of the competition from China. A 2006 article in The Wall Street Journal was headlined, “Wrench Wins Awards, but Is It Priced Too High to Be a Hit?”
According to Mr. Brown’s account of his dealings with Sears, the chain was pleased with the tool’s performance and agreed to place an order for 2012 in plenty of time to keep the cost low. Then his buyer at Sears changed and that agreement seemed to get lost in a new round of haggling. When the order for Father’s Day
finally cam
e, Mr. Brown said, it was too late to guarantee the lower price. He refused the order.
Sears responded by agreeing to the higher price. But when it came time for the Christmas holiday order, negotiations stalled once more, again pushing LoggerHead past the deadline to get the best price, according to Mr. Brown.
“We were sitting there going, ‘Why do they want Father’s Day so bad but they won’t commit for Christmas?’ ” Mr. Brown said. Now he believes that the company had already placed its order for the Craftsman version.
In late September, Mr. Brown said, his suspicions were confirmed. LoggerHead got a “customer feedback” e-mail from Mr. Craig, the tool connoisseur, describing the new Max Axess wrenches. “Sadly, they are made in China,” Mr. Craig wrote. “Can you tell me if LoggerHead has authorized these?”
Craftsman has come under fire before, accused of misleading customers into thinking that its tools are made in America and for stealing intellectual property. In one case, Sears spent two decades defending itself against a claim by Peter M. Roberts, who as a young Sears employee had, on his own time, invented a type of socket wrench.
Mr. Roberts told the court that Sears had played down the value of his invention, paid him $10,000 for the rights, and then made tens of millions of dollars. He eventually received settlements of less than $10 million, according to news reports.
In another, more recent case led by Lee Grossman, Mr. Brown’s lawyer, a judge awarded $25 million to the maker of a tool called the Rotozip who said he had disclosed trade secrets to Sears in an attempt to get the store to carry a new version of the tool.
Sears, a jury decided, took the trade secrets and had the tool made abroad for Craftsman.
“You have LoggerHead out, Dan Brown out, and dozens of American workers laid off — all in the name of profits for Sears,” Mr. Grossman said.
LoggerHead’s lawsuit, Mr. Brown said, will most likely include claims that Sears interfered with the company’s ability to do business with other stores.
“I’m in favor of free trade,” Mr. Brown said. “The person who’s out-innovated loses. But it’s destructive when someone competes but doesn’t out-innovate, they just produce it in a different market without regard to safety codes and human conditions.”
The company that makes the Max Axess wrench and other tools for Craftsman, the Apex Tool Group, is being acquired by Bain Capital, the company founded by Mitt Romney, in a $1.6 billion deal.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Bain was criticized on the grounds that it encouraged outsourcing by companies it buys at the expense of American workers. Apex makes many of its tools overseas. A company spokesman referred all questions to Sears.
Mr. Brown and his lawyer say they believe they have a solid case against Sears, but it could take years to litigate. “What happens to us in the meantime?” Mr. Brown asked.
Mr. Brown is also concerned that while he fights in court, Sears can undercut the price of his wrench.
For now at least, Sears still has some of Mr. Brown’s wrenches in its inventory. On the Sears Web site, the Craftsman and the LoggerHead wrenches are listed at the same regular price, $24.99 for the 8-inch version, and today both are on sale. But for at least a few days in recent weeks, only the Craftsman version was on sale, for $19.99.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 9, 2012, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: An Innovator vs. a Follower.
How New Parents Can Bring Back ‘Made in the USA’
UncategorizedFounder & Creative Director, Oliver & Adelaide
11/07/2012
As an online retailer of baby and toddler products made exclusively in the U.S., I am in a position to see an area where American manufacturing is trying to make a comeback.
Manufacturing American-Made Values
The word “manufacturing” tends to conjure images of industrial assembly lines and heavy machinery. But it’s worth remembering that the word means, at root, “to work by hand.” The vendors I work with range from a retired schoolteacher who crochets blankets to savvy, garment-industry veterans who have struck out on their own with smaller design ventures. Whatever the size of their respective enterprises, these are true businesspeople; I would not be able to work with them if they weren’t capable of delivering products on time, season in and season out.
They are also people who are operating from a system of core values — paramount among them, that “Made in the USA” still matters. It matters for a country where that label remains a source of pride. It matters for the environment, when it makes a real difference whether a product needs to be transported 200 miles versus 6,000 miles. And for parents, it matters perhaps most of all in terms of quality and safety.
What’s at Stake
My own background is in the fashion industry. I’ve lived in China, overseeing production at factories there, and seen firsthand how impersonal and indifferent that process can be. As a parent of two young children, I know that what I buy for them ends up in their hands and, inevitably, their mouths. So for every piece of clothing, each doll and toy I purchase, I want to know exactly how it was made, what it is made of and where it’s been. My experience tells me that when something comes from half a world away, you simply cannot know where it’s been sitting, and for how long, on what warehouse floor, in what cargo ship — and, to me, that’s unacceptable. When scarcely a week goes buy without a recall of a foreign-made product, that’s unacceptable, too.
What “Made in the USA” Means in a World of Choices
Being a new parent can be, let’s face it, intimidating. We are presented with an overwhelming list of products that we are told we need to buy in order to be a “good parent,” and then faced with thousands of choices from scores of brands. My company, Oliver & Adelaide, grew out of my own process of trying to separate the things a parent really needs from the marketing hype, and trying to find the very best manufacturers making these products here in the USA.
Very few parents have the time to undertake this kind of research, and fewer still have the opportunity to visit studios and factories. I have made it my business. In seeing for myself where the products are designed and made and inspecting the raw materials used to make them, I have discovered an impressive group of businesses that put a very personal degree of care and concern into every step of their manufacturing processes. And in meeting these suppliers, I have also discovered that they also bring real passion and pride to what they do.
Small businesses like Loop, which was founded in 2010 by two knit designers to create heirloom quality children’s clothes and blankets, or Zuzii, which uses the highest-quality materials and employs traditional cobbler techniques to handcraft shoes for babies and toddlers, are making outstanding products here in the United States, and doing so with love. But without the huge sales forces and marketing budgets of larger companies that outsource manufacture overseas, they face an uphill climb when it comes to connecting with parents. And because they insist on making American products with American labor and materials, they are unable to take advantage of the mass manufacturing that drives down costs for major brands.
Good for Baby, Good for the Economy
These are the kinds of manufacturers who depend on small retailers to spread word of their products. I’m proud to play a part in that. More than that, though, they depend on parents who will make it a point to buy American — even if it means buying fewer items, but of significantly higher quality. Births, aside from being a joyous experience for each family, are also tremendous drivers of the economy; much like house sales, they set in motion a cascade of purchases. If parents commit to supporting manufacturers who believe in the USA, I believe we can take a real step towards bringing jobs back to this country. In doing so, we may find that the answer to fixing the trade imbalance lies not with any particular policy — or any particular candidat — but, rather, in our own hands.
It’s an approach that could benefit all sectors of our economy. Why not start with the purchases that end up in the hands of our children?
Carhartt's Patriotic New Made-in-USA Line, Old Made-in-USA Line
UncategorizedNovember 7, 2012
But clothing brand Carhartt has been making its clothing in the US since, well, forever. And now its is working to make this fact more a part of its message.
Carhartt’s tan, swirly wave logo on its characteristically tan garments is probably familiar even to those who don’t count on the brand for work wear. But construction workers, truckers, welders, farmers, and just about anyone else in America who works outside an office have a special appreciation for the brand.
“Best for wear” and “From the mill to millions” have been a couple of the mottos the brand has used since it was founded in 1889 by its namesake, Hamilton Carhartt. The “Made in America” tags on its clothing was more or less an afterthought. But now, Carhartt has released a “Made in the USA” line featuring some of its most iconic products. The line, Carhartt says, is “stitched on American soil for any person that believes in hard work.”
“Rather than follow trends, our goal is to always design and manufacture premium work-worthy apparel at a price that respects our consumer’s hard-earned dollar,” Carhartt Vice President of Marketing, Tony Ambroza, told brandchannel when asked about the new line’s timing. When asked any Carhartt chose now to stress its “Made in America” bona-fides, Ambroza said, “Our Made in the USA line of apparel was created in response to consumer feedback; they told us they wanted to know exactly which products we make and source in the U.S. We were able to shift some product to other manufacturing facilities in order to accommodate production of these popular styles.”
But a recent study published by the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal argues that American consumers overvalue US-made apparel. From the study:
With this in mind, Ambroza hinted that the line was not yet complete, suggesting Carhartt fans “look for additional USA-made exclusives this holiday season.”
Made in America Markets Create Communities of Like-Minded Consumers
UncategorizedNovember 5, 2012
They arrived in town late Friday night and were among the first to show up on a recent crisp October morning at a warehouse in Chicago’s Fulton Market area. Music by Band of Horses played softly in the background, giving the airy, white-washed loft space an ambiance equal parts gallery opening and trade show. A large vintage American flag looming over the showroom signaled the common domestic origin of the clothing, accessories, shoes, bicycles and skin care products for sale.
Adachi and Kennedy were already fans of some of the brands at NorthernGRADE, a pop-up menswear market of American-made goods making its Chicago debut two years after launching in Minnesota. Meeting the crafters, designers and small-business owners behind the brands added to the appeal, they said.
“I like the idea of craftsmanship. I feel like the brands are doing it because they care and there’s something about that that’s very commendable. I’d rather support that than go to the mall and buy something made overseas,” said Adachi, 25.
“We had to come, especially since events like this don’t happen much in the Midwest,” said Kennedy, a 23-year-old self-described “made in America freak” who was turned onto the concept by her boyfriend. “It’s so awesome to see people doing what they love. It’s evident in the quality of their products.”
About 800 people turned up for NorthernGRADE Chicago, according to organizers’ estimates, from across the Midwest and beyond, underscoring the growing popularity of the made in America movement in style and fashion, especially among younger consumers.
The markets are fueling the movement beyond the country’s major fashion markets, where the concept has proven successful. NorthernGRADE is modeled after New York City’s annual Pop-Up Flea, which began in 2009 as a showcase of brands mostly from the United States known for their quality goods. The creators of NorthernGRADE adopted the model for a Midwestern audience by focusing on brands from region. But the focus on quality brands hasn’t changed, said Katherine McMillan of men’s accessory line Pierrepont Hicks, which co-founded NorthernGRADE.
“I would not feel comfortable producing this market if I didn’t believe in all of the brands we invite to take part,” she said. “We all have similar philosophies and ethics about our products. If someone’s products don’t turn out to meet (our standards), we don’t invite them back.”
“The Midwest has long history of manufacturing, but no one was cheering it on until now,” said fashion and brand consultant Noah Zagor, who showed up at the market dressed the part in a vintage denim Levi’s jacket and Alden “Indy” boots, both of which were made in the United States.
“There’s a new generation of men learning about basics of getting dressed, and they want knowledge. They want to know where their stuff comes from.”
It’s tempting to want to stereotype supporters of American-made apparel as either a bunch of trendy urbanites who want to look like lumberjacks on the weekend or blue-collar workers expressing patriotism through their work boots. But this event brought in visitors of all stripes. Teenagers dragged their parents along for their wallets while middle-aged men scanned the displays for unadorned pairs of jeans and silver-haired couples, who remembered the days when manufacturing plants dotted the Midwest, tried on trapper hats.
One thing they all seemed to share was nostalgia for an era when clothing and accessories were made to last, regardless of whether they were actually alive during that time.
One man came from London in search of “a few bits of inspiration” for a potential American-made and UK-made retail concept in England, which is also experiencing a wave of nostalgia for a time when clothing was made closer to home.
“People like me want to stray from goods made in the Far East,” said David Swetman, a 27-year-old freelance designer who resembled a menswear model in a Barbour jacket and fisherman’s sweater over a flannel shirt, JW Hulme duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“We’re swinging away from fast fashion, and we’re willing to invest and spend more on quality,” he said. Sure enough, he left the market about an hour later with a $300 Archival waxed cotton vest, a $195 shawl-collared Pendleton sweater and leather shoelaces of different colors. “A nice way to accessorize your brogues,” he noted.
For anyone who might use the words “classic,” “structured,” “Americana” or “heritage” to describe their personal style, there was plenty to covet: colorful racks of Oxford cloth button-ups, thick shawl-collared sweaters, jeans from some of the hottest names in premium denim and all manner of vintage.
Footwear fanatics had their choice of leather boots and shoes in every imaginable color and texture from Red Wing and Oak Street, two boot makers representing old and new school establishments. Tables displayed unisex accessories, from sturdy canvas rucksacks, shoulder bags and pencil cases to wool trapper hats and candy-colored assortments of neckties, bow ties and blankets.
Like other market-goers, Adachi was dressed as though his outfit had come from the showroom: Red Wing Heritage boots (made in America), Raleigh Denim jeans (naturally), flannel shirt (no) and Hill-Side scarf (yes) over a henley (no).
Kennedy also looked the part in dark jeans, vintage pullover sweater and boots, though none of it was made in America, underscoring arguments that clothing made in America can be prohibitively expensive or hard to find.
What would make her wardrobe more patriotic, so to speak? “More shows like this would help,” she said. “It’s hard to find this stuff in person.”
13;
Radio host Glenn Beck last month announced his line of American-made jeans, which gets its denim from the same North Carolina mill used by many premium jean brands. Made Collection, an online flash site sale, launched this fall offering American-made products at discounted prices. In time for the holiday season, luxury and mass market retailers such as Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Barneys are continuing the trend of partnering with independent brands and designers who make their products in America.
It’s also been a busy year for pop-up markets. The Chicago show marked NorthernGRADE’s first incursion into another city, two years after it was started by Pierrepont Hicks and J.W. Hulme. Another show is scheduled for Minneapolis in December, which will be its third there this year. In 2013, it plans to expand to San Francisco, Nashville, Denver and Moscow.
Another pop-up, American Field, debuted in Boston the weekend before NorthernGRADE Chicago and featured 40 vendors, organizer Mark Bollman said.
“It’s one thing to read about companies making things in the U.S. or to check a label, but I think it’s a whole other thing to have a physical representation of like-minded companies in one place,” said Bollman, founder of Boston-based outfitter Ball and Buck. “You can directly see and understand the growth of this movement and really understand the impact of a purchase, be it big or small.”
The markets featured a combination of businesses that use American factories and workshops to produce their goods along with artisans and crafters who, by virtue of living in the United States, make their product here. Across all categories, the raw materials may or may not be domestically sourced depending on availability, with hardware such as zippers, snaps and woven fabric among the materials in shortest supply in the United States.
The growing hype has some worried that “made in America” is on the precipice of becoming a passing style trend before it actually has a chance to realize its oft-cited underlying goals.
“The initial made in the USA message was about bringing jobs back to the country to stimulate the economy, ending the dependency on other countries for goods and bringing back the education and know-how that comes along with the industry. All that’s being diluted and boiled down into the message of buy made in the USA. The bottom has been taken out and become a selling point,” said Chicago-based menswear blogger and digital strategist Brad Bennett, who helped coordinate NorthernGRADE.
It’s unclear whether interest in American-made clothing correlates with an increase in industrial domestic manufacturing of clothing, which declined by 0.7% from September 2011 to September 2012, according to the Federal Reserve’s numbers on industrial production. However, preliminary numbers for September showed a 1.6% increase over the previous month.
That’s where the markets come into play, to create a movement by bringing together consumers, brands and retailers who are doing their part to raise the profile of American-made fashion.
“It’s definitely a celebration of things made here but also a celebration of the people making it,” said Bennett, whose blog, Well Spent, features “obtainable, honestly crafted goods” from the United States and abroad.
“It’s a pretty cool thing to pick up a bag knowing it’s going to last the rest of your life and then shake the hand of the person who made it,” he said. “You’re not just coming to NorthernGRADE to spend money, you meet people and it’s sort of like, here’s your community.”
A big part of selling made in America is educating the consumer on what they get from their investment, said Lesli Larson, co-founder of Archival Clothing, whose best-selling roll top backpack goes for $220.
“You pay upfront, but you buy sparingly and wisely with the idea that you’re going to use this piece for many seasons and eventually you get pennies per wear,” she said.
Her business grew out of her blog, which documented “long-lost artifacts” from Montgomery Ward catalogs and Americana-inspired fashion being produced in Japan with old machines and equipment purchased from the United States.
“The shift of moving past a state of nostalgia to what can we do to make this a reality using available resources has been the challenge,” said Larson, who has kept her job as an archivist at the University of Oregon-Eugene even as her business has grown.
Larson relishes the opportunity to share her knowledge, which she did with fans including Adachi, who spent more than three hours floating around the showroom before deciding to drop $300 on an Archival vest. His girlfriend’s big-ticket purchase was a pair of Tellason jeans for $198. They were confident that the purchases were worth the money, not only for their quality but because of the stories behind them.
It reminded Adachi of a TED Talk by Simon Sinek who put forth the idea that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
“I’m the type of person who’s more interested in why,” Adachi said.
For others, though, the origin of the goods was not nearly as important as their quality.
“I came to the event for the uniqueness of the collections,” said Jeff Medchill, a mortgage industry auditor who also picked up a pair of Tellason jeans. “American-made is not a strong point, I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid or buy American-made.”
Collin Moody said he was drawn to the event because he supported Chicago-based retailers Haberdash and Penelope’s, which were showing at the market. Normally, not everything they carry in their stores is domestically made, reflecting a commonly held position among consumers and stockists that buying made in America is secondary to sourcing high-quality products made responsibly regardless of their origin.
“We’re interested in
the
ethics of the products. We try to be conscious of where they come from and who’s making them,” said Moody, 21, also a student. “It also helps us not be wasteful.”
For retired carpenter Paul Hortenstine, the market was simply an opportunity “to find quality products made in the USA.”
He and his wife made the trip from Shorewood, Illinois, after learning of the event on Twitter. He had his sights set on a Stormy Kromer trapper hat, but stopped on his way over to quiz George Vlagos, proprietor of Oak Street Boots, on the origin of material for his footwear (Horween Leather of Chicago).
“This guy from Oak Street Bootmakers, he’s making quality product. I’m all for seeing people succeed making quality products in the U.S.,” Hortenstine happily exclaimed as he walked away without purchasing a pair, which run from $200 to $500.
“The price is high but quality justifies it,” he said. “Maybe you can buy it all or you can focus on one or two things.”
He finally settled on two hats in different colors from Stormy Kromer, which have been made in Ironwood, Michigan, for more than 100 years. He also picked up a vest, a recent addition to Stormy Kromer’s apparel catalog, reflecting the success of what sales rep Joel Anderson called “the Trojan horse approach.”
“They come for the hats, because that’s what we’re known for, and they find our apparel,” said Anderson, whose brand was one of few at NorthernGRADE that fell into the heritage category (along with Red Wing) for its long history. While Stormy Kromer is an established brand, being in the same space alongside up-and-coming brands puts it in front of a new, younger audience of consumers and potential wholesalers.
“It’s a three-pronged approach. Educate consumers on our rich history and story, meet fellow vendors, and get new retail business,” he said. “You never know who’s going to come in.”
What Is ‘Made in America’ Worth?
American Made, Domestic Sourcing, Economy, Made in USA, Manufacturing & SourcingRead more
It's Global Warming, Stupid
UncategorizedNovember 01, 2012
Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.
In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.
Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S.
If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
On Oct. 17 the giant German reinsurance company Munich Re issued a prescient report titled Severe Weather in North America. Globally, the rate of extreme weather events is rising, and “nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” From 1980 through 2011, weather disasters caused losses totaling $1.06 trillion. Munich Re found “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” By contrast, there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.” Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,” the report said, “though it influences various perils in different ways.”
Global warming “particularly affects formation of heat waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity,” Munich Re said. This July was the hottest month recorded in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that two-thirds of the continental U.S. suffered drought conditions this summer.
Granted, Munich Re wants to sell more reinsurance (backup policies purchased by other insurance companies), so maybe it has a selfish reason to stir anxiety. But it has no obvious motive for fingering global warming vs. other causes. “If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible,” said Peter Hoppe, the company’s chief of geo-risks research, “all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”
Which raises the question of what alerts and measures to undertake. In his book The Conundrum, David Owen, a staff writer at the New Yorker, contends that as long as the West places high and unquestioning value on economic growth and consumer gratification—with China and the rest of the developing world right behind—we will continue to burn the fossil fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Fast trains, hybrid cars, compact fluorescent light bulbs, carbon offsets—they’re just not enough, Owen writes.
Yet even he would surely agree that the only responsible first step is to put climate change back on the table for discussion. The issue was MIA during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane.
Mitt Romney has gone from being a supporter years ago of clean energy and emission caps to, more recently, a climate agnostic. On Aug. 30, he belittled his opponent’s vow to arrest climate change, made during the 2008 presidential campaign. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Romney told the Republican National Convention in storm-tossed Tampa. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Two months later, in the wake of Sandy, submerged families in New Jersey and New York urgently needed some help dealing with that rising-ocean stuff.
Obama and his strategists clearly decided that in a tight race during fragile economic times, he should compete with Romney by promising to mine more coal and drill more oil. On the campaign trail, when Obama refers to the environment, he does so only in the context of spurring “green jobs.” During his time in office, Obama has made modest progress on climate issues. His administration’s fuel-efficiency standards will reduce by half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks by 2025. His regulations and proposed rules to curb mercury, carbon, and other emissions from coal-fired power plants are forcing utilities to retire some of the dirtiest old facilities. And the country has doubled the generation of energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
Still, renewable energy accounts for less than 15 percent of the country’s electricity. The U.S. cannot shake its fossil fuel addiction by going cold turkey. Offices and factories can’t function in the dark. Shippers and drivers and air trave
lers w
ill not abandon petroleum overnight. While scientists and entrepreneurs search for breakthrough technologies, the next president should push an energy plan that exploits plentiful domestic natural gas supplies. Burned for power, gas emits about half as much carbon as coal. That’s a trade-off already under way, and it’s worth expanding. Environmentalists taking a hard no-gas line are making a mistake.
Conservatives champion market forces—as do smart liberals—and financial incentives should be part of the climate agenda. In 2009 the House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation that would have rewarded more nimble industrial players that figure out how to use cleaner energy. The bill died in the Senate in 2010, a victim of Tea Party-inspired Republican obstructionism and Obama’s decision to spend his political capital to push health-care reform.
Despite Republican fanaticism about all forms of government intervention in the economy, the idea of pricing carbon must remain a part of the national debate. One politically plausible way to tax carbon emissions is to transfer the revenue to individuals. Alaska, which pays dividends to its citizens from royalties imposed on oil companies, could provide inspiration (just as Romneycare in Massachusetts pointed the way to Obamacare).
Ultimately, the global warming crisis will require global solutions. Washington can become a credible advocate for moving the Chinese and Indian economies away from coal and toward alternatives only if the U.S. takes concerted political action. At the last United Nations conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, the world’s governments agreed to seek a new legal agreement that binds signatories to reduce their carbon emissions. Negotiators agreed to come up with a new treaty by 2015, to be put in place by 2020. To work, the treaty will need to include a way to penalize countries that don’t meet emission-reduction targets—something the U.S. has until now refused to support.
If Hurricane Sandy does nothing else, it should suggest that we need to commit more to disaster preparation and response. As with climate change, Romney has displayed an alarmingly cavalier attitude on weather emergencies. During one Republican primary debate last year, he was asked point-blank whether the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ought to be turned back to the states. “Absolutely,” he replied. Let the states fend for themselves or, better yet, put the private sector in charge. Pay-as-you-go rooftop rescue service may appeal to plutocrats; when the flood waters are rising, ordinary folks welcome the National Guard.
It’s possible Romney’s kill-FEMA remark was merely a pander to the Right, rather than a serious policy proposal. Still, the reconfirmed need for strong federal disaster capability—FEMA and Obama got glowing reviews from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Romney supporter—makes the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign-trail statement all the more reprehensible.
The U.S. has allowed transportation and other infrastructure to grow obsolete and deteriorate, which poses a threat not just to public safety but also to the nation’s economic health. With once-in-a-century floods now occurring every few years, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the country’s biggest city will need to consider building surge protectors and somehow waterproofing its enormous subway system. “It’s not prudent to sit here and say it’s not going to happen again,” Cuomo said. “I believe it is going to happen again.”
David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large ofForeign Policy, noted in an Oct. 29 blog post that Sandy also brought his hometown, Washington, to a standstill, impeding affairs of state. To lessen future impact, he suggested burying urban and suburban power lines, an expensive but sensible improvement.
Where to get the money? Rothkopf proposed shifting funds from post-Sept. 11 bureaucratic leviathans such as the Department of Homeland Security, which he alleges is shot through with waste. In truth, what’s lacking in America’s approach to climate change is not the resources to act but the political will to do so. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that two-thirds of Americans say there is “solid evidence” the earth is getting warmer. That’s down 10 points since 2006. Among Republicans, more than half say it’s either not a serious problem or not a problem at all.
Such numbers reflect the success of climate deniers in framing action on global warming as inimical to economic growth. This is both shortsighted and dangerous. The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.
THIS CHRISTMAS: WILL YOU SUPPORT AMERICAN OR FOREIGN WORKERS?
UncategorizedOctober 27, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
Well, retailers have the Christmas tree displays out for a couple of weeks now, gradually squeezing out Halloween junk. People are commenting, “I don’t even want to think about it” or “I just hate this time of the year”. I thought Christmas was supposed to be so special with all the family, warm and fuzzy? Presents, Old Saint Nick and new credit card bills go into high gear the day after Thanksgiving.
With 25 million Americans out of work, this “holiday” season is likely to be one of more pressure put on parents to buy children birthday presents even though it’s supposed to be the birth date of Jesus Christ.
No question according to polls – jobs are the number one issue this election cycle because folks are desperate. Just like Americans were during the “Great” Depression.
Since the crooks, liars and thieves in the Outlaw Congress (likely at least 80% or more will get reelected) refuse to get the U.S. out of all the job killing treaties (NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT/WTO and a dozen more passed since 1994), it’s up to we the people to continue forcing the issue by refusing to buy foreign junk keeping people in other countries employed while Americans stand in soup lines, live in their cars or collect unemployment insurance for years.
One of the carrots used to sell the American people for NAFTA was “cheaper” goods. They sure are – cheap in quality, but not in dollars. Go to Dillard’s, Macy’s or other department stores and look at the price tag on some rag or shoes made in Communist China. It is as high or higher than a similar one made in America. I know because I do price comparisons as research. Of course, the purchasing power of the dollar continues to take a beating, so that worthless piece of paper in your wallet doesn’t go as far. Tens of millions of Americans have no idea what that means anymore than they know how critical it is to understand the trade deficit:
“The cession of the whole treaty-making power to the president and the senate is one of the most fearful features in this Constitution, as they can enter into the most ruinous of foreign engagements.” Patrick Henry
John Boehner and the Senate have given the impostor president, Barry Soetoro aka Obama, every single “free” trade treaty since he unlawfully took office. The traitorous dogs in the Outlaw Congress aren’t finished yet with killing off yet more jobs:
“JBS CEO Art Thompson’s weekly video news update for September 24-30, 2012. In this week’s video he discusses how Republicans and Democrats want to open up trade with Russia, which means that more jobs will leave the country; how the State Department and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are working to get U.S. businesses to invest in Egypt, which means still more U.S. jobs lost; how JBS was calling Osama bin Laden a terrorist back when the world press was naming him a man of peace; and how the Council on Foreign Relations is continuing its drive toward a New World Order with its influence over our military’s role in Afghanistan.”
I hear people say all the time, you can’t find Made in USA. Not true. More and more retailers are making sure with a big sticker on the product that it’s Made in America and in tv commercial ads. Two days ago I needed a new cookie sheet and a new pizza pan. I bought both of them at my local HEB grocery store and both had a nice big easy to remove sticker that said Made in USA. I wanted to purchase the orgreenic frying pan you see on tv; nothing sticks to it. I called their toll free number. Made in Communist China. No, thanks. I’m not going to sell out my fellow Americans over a frying pan.
As this is a small rural town, over the years you get to know management where you shop on a regular basis. When I first moved to Big Spring, there was no organic veggies and few products at our local supermarket. After a couple of years, I took my receipts to management and said, here — see what I spend over in Midland (40 miles away) to get what I want? It’s taken time, but HEB has really improved with an excellent assortment of organic items like Virgin Organic Coconut Oil, which I use for cooking, as well as a full selection of fruits and veggies.
I showed management they lost money because I refuse to buy foreign fruits and vegetables. I will drive out of town to get them and buy from local farmers markets. We just have to make our voices heard and let management know where we put our consumer dollars.
Every time you buy made in Communist China, Communist Hong Kong or some other country — especially for cars and trucks owned by Toyota and the rest of the foreign manufacturers — you enrich them, not America.
The trade deficit continues to go up while employment for Americans goes down. People are now paying workers in India for a job they used to have, yet they continue to reelect the same sell outs like John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi who have consistently voted to kill American jobs and send them overseas.
Does anyone see the insanity going on here?
More than 223,000 businesses have closed since the 2008 meltdown. After the above mentioned unconstitutional, sovereignty killing treaties were passed, America began to shift from being the world leader in agriculture, manufacturing and engineering. “Free” trade was going to be the biggest boon for America since the railroad!!!
That is nothing but propaganda. It was America’s protectionist policies of the of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that made America an economic superpower on this earth. Fair trade worked in the past, until greed, as usual, took over.
Those protectionist policies made America prosperous, providing good paying jobs in the ag, manufacturing and industrial sectors. After those destructive trade treaties were passed, MILLIONS ended up working at McDonald’s or other minimum wage jobs. Instead of manufacturing and growing all we need to be a self sustaining nation, more and more entertainment based businesses sprung up. When the middle class began hemorrhaging jobs, people were forced to count every penny and that means eating at home and no more $100 a game NBA tickets. Foreclosures were the hottest business in the country.
For almost two decades, the American people, through their consumer dollars, have been building up
countr
ies like India while America continues to slide into economic depression. For almost two decades, Americans are now paying foreign workers for jobs they once held.
Of course, we must not forget the profitable undelcared “wars” that have been going on for over a decade in the Middle East. Big money for defense contractors and private sector contractors hauling in blood money. Yes, blood money. Work for a company building those drones that killed more than 2,500 innocent civilians in countries like Pakistan:
“According to a report last month by academics at Stanford and New York universities, between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since the strikes in Pakistan began in 2004. The report said of those, up to 881 were civilians, including 176 children. Only 41 people who had died had been confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets.”
Murder being done in our name. Paychecks that drip blood of innocents.
“New Report: U.S.A. Too Dependent on Foreign Suppliers in Crises Revitalizing American Manufacturing called “Urgent National Priority.” New report by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security Robert B. Stephan sees the U.S. as too dependent on foreign suppliers in crises.”
Every time we buy Made in America, those companies grow. The money stays in our country. The employee spends locally for things like the dry cleaners, the hardware store and all the small businesses that are the engine of our economy.
There is plenty of time to order on line for items for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Keep telling retailers you want Made in America. Let foreign junk sit on the shelves. Tell retailers you will take the time to order on line. Tell retailers you want Made in America products in their store or you won’t buy.
I would also ask folks to remember that Communist China is NOT our friend. They use slave labor, kill their own people all the time and force women to have abortions right up to term. Can it get more evil than that?
Let me also offer this up as I do every year. If you do gift giving, it doesn’t always have to be a ‘thing’. A few years ago when my niece and nephew lived in Las Vegas, I purchased a family membership to the fantastic Las Vegas Natural History Museum. For $65.00, the kids, my neice and her husband had a year of memories and fun instead of some junk you made in Communist China or another piece of clothing from India.
There are many creative things to give to children, teens and young adults for Christmas that enrich their lives. Use a search engine for your city and type in tourism. You’ll see all kinds of things to give gift certificates for like maybe horse back riding, a day trip to one of the most fabulous places outside Denver, CO, The Wild Animal Sanctuary, or some other activity that creates family memories instead of some toy made in Communist China. Look at how many recall of toys over lead content are from Communist China. Think it’s an accident?
Just my personal note: I rejected American Apparel when they contacted me because they use sex to sell their products; too many of their models look underage. The last time I looked at their site, young girls had their backsides spread to the camera with a thin piece of material barely covering their “butt crack”. Not to mention:
“American Apparel finds itself once again in a familiar place — sued again for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, because of the vulnerability its CEO’s philosophy of sexual freedom in the workplace creates for the publicly held company.” (Chief of American Apparel Faces 2nd Harassment Suit) No thanks.
Did you know Glenn Beck did this? “The 1791 brand was built around one idea: Made in America. Late last year, Glenn took a look at some of his favorite denim companies and realized they were making their clothing overseas. He was frustrated. How could something so inherent to the spirit and the history of this country NOT be made in the USA anymore? Not content to sit back and complain, Glenn charged the 1791 team with creating a pair of jeans that would be designed and crafted here in America.
“The result is 1791 Denim. It took 1791 a full year to get the jeans right, but now they’re finally ready. The premium 100% cotton ring-spun selvage denim jeans are 100% “Made in the USA”. They are woven in Greensboro, NC at Cone Denim® Mills, and are cut and sewn in Kentucky in a factory established in the 1920’s.”
Please make this a Made in America Christmas so those companies can expand and hire American workers- all year long. We the people, our ancestors and family built this nation and made it a prosperous one. We can do it again.
Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; 2 million copies sold. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country. She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy isn’t left, right or in the middle; she is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party.
Buy American: Movement to Find ‘Made in U.S.A' Products Gains Steam
UncategorizedOctober 23, 2012
Perry, 44, sometimes uses her great-grandmother’s crochet hooks to make crafts and her original Slinky — a toy she saved from her childhood — is still in top shape.
Perry is surrounded by items from the past, but she’s an example of the future — one in which more American consumers are seeking out and buying 100 percent American-made goods.
“It is very difficult to find a truly ‘made in America’ product,” said Perry, a married mother of four. As a small-business owner, she understands the costs associated with stateside manufacturing, but as a consumer, she wants high-quality goods made right at home.
“How many plants have to shut down or jobs have to be lost because we do not manufacture in this country anymore?” she asks.
For several decades, “made in the U.S.A.” — a label once proudly imprinted on everything from apparel to cars — hasn’t just been hard to find; it’s been a hard sell.
In the minds of many American consumers, foreign goods came to represent superior quality at a lower cost. Shoppers showed their preference with their purchases.
Several previous attempts to invigorate consumer interest in American-made products fell flat, says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for market research firm, NPD Group, but this time around the movement seems to have more traction with a broad range of consumers, including younger generations.
In the past two years, retailers, fashion designers and even musicians — most recently at a two-day benefit concert last month in Philadelphia curated by rapper Jay-Z — have all seized some aspect of the modern made-in-America movement.
“Made in the U.S.A. now is all about patriotism,” Cohen said. “It’s about supporting jobs in the U.S. rather than shipping them off.” The topic is a hot issue in the current political climate, fueled in part by last summer’s outcry from members of Congress over the Chinese-made U.S. Olympic team uniforms.
Buford, Ga.-based Okabashi Brands, Inc., which has designed, manufactured and assembled its sandals and flip-flops in the U.S. since the company launched in 1984, is changing its tagline to reflect that history.
They are on the verge of deals to manufacture private-label shoes for several large companies — including one that holds a 50-percent share of the flip-flop market — seeking to launch made-in-America lines, said Jason Boswell, vice president of sales.
Traditionally, U.S. manufacturing has come with a higher cost, but as overseas labor costs increase, the gap is closing, Boswell says.
Consumers, seduced by decades of low-cost goods or facing economic constraints, have resisted paying higher prices for American-made products, but this, too, is slowly changing, Cohen said.
“Consumers will say, ‘I’ll pay (up to) 10 percent more (for American-made goods).’ Some will say up to 25 percent more,” Cohen said. “I believe half of that to be true, but the fact that they are willing to spend a little more tells you something.”
Still, the desire to buy American doesn’t always translate into action, and one of the challenges consumers face is figuring out which products are truly American-made.
In addition to buying antiques that she knows were made in America, Perry will email or call companies to ask if their products are 100-percent U.S.-made. It takes effort and sometimes she is forced to take her business elsewhere — often to mom-and-pop stores where she may pay more.
But Perry isn’t complaining.
“Either society has to shift and be willing to pay a little more for something that is a little better,” Perry says, “or ‘made in America’ simply isn’t going to exist anymore.”
US Economic Growth Up Sharply in Third Quarter
UncategorizedThe jump was partly due to a large increase in government spending.
The figures are the one of the last pieces of important economic data before the US presidential election between Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney on 6 November.
Federal government expenditures and gross investment increased 9.6% compared with the previous quarter, while national defence spending rose by 13%. The Commerce Department said there was a jump in personal consumption as well.
A drought in the US, which was the worst for 50 years, cut farm output and took 0.4 percentage points off the GDP figures, the Commerce Department said.
With more than 20 million Americans unemployed and a huge public deficit, the economy has become one of the central issues of the campaign.
The US has now been growing for more than three years, since June 2009.
“Growth came in a little higher than we had feared, largely because of the big jump in federal spending,” said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics.
“But the economy is still not growing rapidly enough to create sufficient jobs to reduce the unemployment rate.”
Economic fightMr Romney has repeatedly challenged President Obama’s record, saying ”we have not made the progress we need to make”.
“If the president were re-elected, we’d go to almost $20 trillion (£12.4tn) of national debt. This puts us on a road to Greece,” Mr Romney said during the second presidential debate.
Mr Obama replied that his opponent did not have a five-point plan to fix the economy, but ”a one-point plan”.
Last month, the US unemployment rate fell to 7.8%, down from 8.1%, its lowest since January 2009 when Mr Obama’s term in office began.
Nigel Gault, chief US economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “There is prospect that we could do better next year if we could clear up some of the uncertainties, particularly the fiscal cliff.
“A lot of the ingredients for stronger growth are falling into place, particularly the gradual easing of credit conditions and the improvement in the housing market.”
The “fiscal cliff” refers to automatic tax hikes and government spending cuts that were agreed by Democrats and Republicans during the last budget face-off, which will drain about $600bn out of the economy next year unless action is taken by Congress.
Low interest ratesTo help get the US economy back on track, the US Federal Reserve in September restarted its policy of pumping money into the economy via quantitative easing. The Fed pledged to buy $40bn of mortgage debt a month, with the aim of reducing long-term borrowing costs for firms and households.
“Growth was fairly resilient,” said Christopher Vecchio, a currency analyst at DailyFX, but “nevertheless, this is still not the stable recovery the Federal Reserve is looking for”.
Recent housing data has also shown some encouraging signs of recovery, analysts say.
Sales of existing homes and housing construction have picked up and the main home price index has risen consecutively for three months.
House prices have rebounded in some areas, while mortgage rates are expected to stay at record lows because of low interest rates.
The Fed has vowed to keep rates at the current levels of close to zero until 2015.
The economy grew by 1.3% in the previous quarter. The US states its growth in annualised terms, meaning that its quarterly growth rate is extrapolated as if it was growing at that pace for the whole year.
What is your experience of the US economy? Have you recently found a job? Or are you unemployed? Have you found borrowing easier? Send us your comments using the form below.