When he was coming of age in the early ’80s, the phrase “Buy American” was epitomized by Chrysler’s boxy, style-challenged sedan, marketed as a star-spangled rebuke to the sleek imports of the day. In Mr. Schiff’s view, you bought one to satisfy a patriotic duty, not a sense of style. “ ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ came with baggage,” he said.
Times have changed. Even as the “Made in the U.S.A.” label has grown scarce, thanks to the offshore manufacturing in apparel and other industries, it has acquired cachet as a signifier of old-school craftsmanship, even luxury.
The movement has come far enough that Mr. Schiff, a former advertising executive from Miami, believed the time was right to start a Gilt-like shopping site for the Americana set, selling items like shuttle-loom jeans, lace baby dolls and a 19th-century-style baseball made of leather sourced from a Chicago tannery.
“The old ‘Buy American’ is get something lousy and pay more,” said Mr. Schiff, 45. Now “it’s a premium product.”
Style bloggers were among the early adopters. “ ‘Made in U.S.A.’ has gone through a rebranding of sorts,” said Michael Williams, whose popular men’s style blog,
A Continuous Lean, has become an online clubhouse for devotees of American-made heritage labels like Red Wing Shoes and Filson.
But the embrace of domestic goods has also moved beyond scruffy D.J. types in Brooklyn who plunk down $275 for a pair of hand-sewn dungarees sewn from Cone denim from the company’s White Oak plant in North Carolina. The adherents now include “urban creatives, high-net-worth individuals, locavores, liberals, conservatives,” said Mr. Williams, who also represents some of these heritage brands as a marketing consultant.
In other words, Americana chic has gone mainstream. Just visit the nearest mall. Club Monaco unveiled a Made in the USA collection last year, in collaboration with Mr. Williams. J. Crew cashes in on Americana chic by selling domestically manufactured Alden shoes, Levi’s Vintage Clothing jeans and Billykirk leather goods.
Joseph Abboud’s home page trumpets its collections as “Made in the New America.”
The newfound pride also extends to American cities and smaller communities. Made in Brooklyn is a phenomenon so self-aware, there are stores like
By Brooklyn that specialize in products made in the borough. Similarly, an old shoe-polish brand called
Shinola has recently been revived to make upscale watches, bicycles and other crafted goods in Detroit and is being promoted as “Made in Detroit.”
And in a survey last year of 1,300 affluent shoppers by Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based consulting and marketing group, respondents ranked the United States first (higher than Italy or France) in perceived manufacturing quality of luxury goods.
Indeed, the “Made in the U.S.A.” label has become chic in the eyes of well-heeled consumers not just in the United States, but also in Asia, said Paulette Garafalo, the president for international, wholesale and manufacturing at Brooks Brothers, which has increased production of shirts, suits and neckwear at its three American factories to meet growing demand. “People want the credibility of an American brand,” she said.
The flight of American factory jobs has even become a heated issue in the presidential race, with President Obama and Mitt Romney trading jabs over being the “Outsourcer in Chief,” to use Mr. Romney’s phrase.
But while American-made goods are now fashionable, few have been willing to stake their professional future on it quite like Mr. Schiff. A former advertising executive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami, who oversaw the introduction of Coke Zero, he left the firm in April to start Made with two other veterans from the agency, Scott Prindle and John Kieselhorst.
In a sense, they started two companies, which are based in Boulder, Colo.:
Made Collection, the flash-sale site, and
Made Movement, an advertising agency that represents companies that manufacture only in America. (“If Apple came to us, we’d have to turn them down,” Mr. Schiff said.)
Unlike the typical Buy American sites, which feature crude graphics and a low-budget hodgepodge of pliers and rain boots, Made Collection has the slick yet earthy look of a Madewell campaign. Edie Ure, a former designer for Ralph Lauren and Anthropologie, serves as the site’s curator, and she gives special consideration to design-forward wares that would not be out of place in a Monocle magazine gift guide.
Recent flash-sale items included a knot-back black swimsuit from
Cala Ossidiana, a swimwear company based in New York. It sells for $295 and, according to a graphic accompanying each item, supports six American workers. For those with humbler tastes, there was an O.C.E. Hickory work shirt, produced by inmates in the Oregon correctional system as part of its job-training program, for $26.99.
The company grew out of Mr. Schiff’s conviction that a manufacturing revival was crucial to a lasting economic recovery.
Made now counts 26 employees, and with a minimum of publicity, its site has 10,000 members. The ad agency has signed seven clients, including Emeco chairs, a Pennsylvania-based design company whose product sells at Design Within Reach, and New Belgium Brewing, based in Fort Collins, Colo., which brews Fat Tire ale.
Mr. Schiff practices what he preaches. For a recent lunch at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, he wore Levi’s premium shuttle-loom 501s made in Los Angeles. His tattooed arms poked out of a blue checked shirt by the boutique design house
8.15 August Fifteenth, made in New York City, which he spruced up with a seersucker bow tie by Gitman Bros., made in North Carolina. The only smudge on the stars-and-stripes tableau was his pair of Vans sneakers made in China.
“I would say most days, I’m at about 75 percent,” he said, referring to how much of his outfit is American made. He never wants to become a fanatic, however. “If you become obsessive about it,” he added, “it’s an imposition versus a choice.”
Cities Leading An American Manufacturing Revival
Uncategorized5/24/2012
Certainly how long this expansion can last is an open question, particularly given weakness in Europe and the slowdown in formerly fast-growing developing countries. But one thing is clear: the industrial resurgence is reshaping the economic and employment map in often unexpected ways.
Now rather than being pulled down by manufacturing, our Best Cities For Jobs survey, conducted by Pepperdine University’s Michael Shires, found that many industrial regions are benefiting from their prowess.
From 2010 through March, manufacturers added 470,000 jobs and enjoyed a rate of job growth 10% faster than the rest of the private economy. In the past many areas suffered from having too many industrial workers. Now it looks like we will have too few skilled ones, even in hard-hit sectors like the auto industry. In 2011 there were 50,000 unfilled U.S. job openings in industrial engineering, welding, and computer-controlled machine tool operating, according to the forecasting firm EMSI. If the revival continues, this shortage could worsen.
To determine the cities that are leading the manufacturing revival, we assessed manufacturing employment growth in the 65 largest metropolitan statistical areas. Rankings are based on recent growth trends, as well as job growth over the past five and 10 years, and the MSAs’ momentum.
Where Technology Meets Manufacturing
In an era of excitement over the Internet, it is often forgotten that a majority of the country’s scientists and engineers work for manufacturers, and that industrial companies account for 68% of business R&D spending, which in turn accounts for about 70% of total R&D spending.
Nowhere is this linkage between technology and industry more evident than in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area, which ranks first on our list of the metropolitan areas leading the manufacturing revival. Over the past year the region was No. 2 in the nation in manufacturing growth, with employment expanding 7.9%. The aerospace sector, led by Boeing, accounted for roughly half this expansion.
The growth in aerospace and high-tech employment creates precisely the kinds of high-wage jobs, including for blue-collar workers, that are lacking in many parts of the country. In 2010 the average factory wage in the area was $64,925, up 9% from 2007. Most critically, manufacturing activity drives growth in other sectors of the economy. About one in six of all private-sector jobs depend on the manufacturing sector, and every dollar of sales of manufactured products generates $1.40 in output from other sectors, the highest of any industry.
As manufacturing employment overall has dropped, the percentage of higher-wage, skilled industrial jobs has been climbing over the last decades, particularly in high-technology related fields Overall, according to EMSI data, the average American factory worker earned $73,000 in 2011, $20,000 more than the average job.
Seattle is not alone in creating high-tech-oriented industrial jobs. Over the past two years Salt Lake City, Utah, which ranks third on our list, has seen significant growth in both electronics and aerospace employment, including a new Northrop Grumman facility. Firms connected to the medical device industry such as Biomerics are also expanding in the area.
Manufacturing is also rebounding in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, which ranks eighth on our list and No. 1 on our overall list of Best Big Cities For Jobs. Last year industrial employment in the Texas state capital area jumped 5%. Semiconductor firms are a big force, employing over 10,000 workers. Although more known for its high-tech electronics, Austin has also enjoyed an expansion in automobile-related employment as well as medical devices.
Energy Capitals
The largest grouping of manufacturing stars have emerged from the Texas-Oklahoma energy belt. With the shale drilling boom unlocking ample supplies of natural gas and lowering prices, petrochemical companies have undertaken major expansions. The rise in drilling and exploration has also sparked greater demand for industrial products such as pipes, drill rigs and other machinery. No surprise that the biggest backers of shale gas exploration are prominent CEOs of industrial firms. A recent study by PwC suggests that shale gas could lead to the development of 1 million industrial jobs.
The shale drilling revolution is making an impact across the country, in places like North Dakota and Youngstown, Ohio, but the epicenter of this boom remains firmly in the oil patch. The Thunder you hear in Oklahoma City is not just on the basketball court — energy growth has propelled a 1,500 person jump in manufacturing employment, a 6.1% increase, with another 1,000 new jobs expected this year. Oklahoma City ranks second on our list.
Other energy capitals are also thriving on the industrial front, including Houston (fourth place), San Antonio (seventh) and Ft. Worth-Arlington (ninth). Although energy is the main driver, manufacturing has been on the rise in a broad array of areas, including aerospace, biomedical and food processing. The surging export economy — Texas is easily the nation’s number one export
er —
has further bolstered this growth.
Rustbelt Rebounders
The high-tech and energy economies may be fast-breaking in terms of industrial growth, but manufacturing’s comeback has put some new bounce in the step of many long forlorn parts of the nation’s “rustbelt.” Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, Mich., epitomizes this trend. Unlike Detroit, which has suffered mass disinvestment, this more suburban area a half hour drive away has become the epicenter of a new, more tech-oriented auto industry.
The Warren-Troy area’s rich concentration of skilled tradespeople and industrial engineers has been described as America’s “automation alley.” It continues to attract high-industrial firms from abroad such as Brose, a German car parts manufacturer, which has recently announced a $60 million investment in the area. Even housing is on the rebound, with rents rising at the fourth highest clip in the country, just behind such standouts as San Francisco and Miami.
Nor is the Midwest manufacturing rebound limited to Michigan. Over the past year sixth-ranked Cincinnati enjoyed 5.4% growth in industrial employment. Manufacturing growth was also strong in Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wisc., a center for the production of machine tools and other precision equipment that ranks 10th on our list.
Who’s Falling Behind
Of course not all regions have benefited from the industrial resurgence. For example, the nation’s largest industrial area, Los Angeles, ranks a miserable 49th. The area lost some 20% of its industrial jobs since 2006, and the losses continued over the past year. This goes a long way to explain the area’s continued underperformance before, during and, now, in the early days of recovery from the financial crisis.
Some other large regions did even worse, including such one-time industrial powerhouses as Philadelphia (55th) and New York (59th). Some may argue that these, and other areas, which have been losing manufacturing jobs for decades, no longer need to engage in the messy business of making stuff. But that long fashionable way thinking may be outdated itself, as seen by the improving fortunes of our industrial top 10.
Full List: The 10 Cities Leading The U.S. Manufacturing Revival
Hershey Invests $300 Million In Future Of American Manufacturing… And Consumption
Uncategorized9/25/2012
I talked with JP Bilbrey, President and CEO and Terry O’Day, SVP of Global Operations about the investment. Both say that the plant is an homage the company’s roots and founder, which is a warm, nice thought. More tangibly, what it does is reaffirm Pennsylvania’s role in the company’s chocolate manufacturing for North America. The plant employs technology never before seen in candy manufacturing, O’Day says, including highly automated IT systems designed to keep Hershey’s Kisses rolling off the lines 24 hours a day.
And while automation means fewer workers in the plant,(Hershey is training 700 of its 4,800 Pennsylvanian employees to run it) the company estimates that it will still produce $1 billion in economic gains for Pennsylvania over the course of five years — coming in the form of supplier contracts, payroll and related spending.
It may be cheaper to manufacture in other countries — and Hershey does, its playing a big game in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil — but when it comes to making chocolate there are other things to consider. For Hershey, that means access to fresh milk. Their West Hershey plant consumes between 300,000 and 350,000 gallons of milk a day — mostly from a 90-mile radius surrounding the plants. And they want short commutes for products to retailers.
The new plant isn’t the only way Hershey is employing technology. Come candy seasons (Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas) they now use a proprietary system to place orders for retailers — so they know how much of each Hershey’s product they should purchase. This alone would be unremarkable, but retailers have come to trust the system so thoroughly that Hershey now uses the system to order competitors’ products for retailers too. The combination of trust and efficiency has reaped the company serious rewards — their market cap that has doubled in the past five years, growing 20% in the past 12 months.
Bilbrey affirms that 80-90% of Hershey products consumed in the US are made in the US, and the company boasts more than a 40% share of the American chocolate market. In that sense, the new plant is part of Hershey’s broader strategy — to maintain, if not grow, share in the US, where it already has a prominent presence, while more or less ignoring another behemoth established market — Western Europe, where they see low growth, established competitors, loyal customers and high price of entry.
“We have outperformed our peer group in North America,” Bilbrey says. “And we see North America as a growth story. We worry about a lot of things, but we are optimistic about what is possible.”
That includes upping advertising, Bilbrey says that Hershey spends as much on advertising now as their entire category did in 2008 — Hershey now reinvests about 7% of net sales into advertising. More proof, he says, that the company believes that brighter days lie ahead for America and that Americans will be spending more of their disposable income on candy.
Manufacturing Renaissance? Exports, Reshoring Could Bring 5M Jobs to U.S.
UncategorizedSeptember 21, 2012
The uptick is production combined with the jobs needed for reshoring could add up to 2.5 million to 5 million jobs by the end of the decade as manufacturers shift production back to the U.S., according to the study.
That’s up from BCG’s forecast last year, when it predicted the U.S. would add just 2 to 3 million jobs, as major companies have started revealing intentions to shift some jobs to the U.S. over the next few quarters.
“Over the coming years, as European and Japanese companies decide where to locate new capacity, we can expect many more announcements like these,” said Michael Zinser, coauthor of the BCG report who leads the firm’s manufacturing work in the Americas.
While the return of jobs to U.S. shores, also referred to as insourcing and onshoring, is still a relatively new phenomenon, several large manufacturers have recently announced plans to expand or move production to the country.
Toyota, for example, announced that it will export Camry sedans made in Kentucky and Sienna minivans made in Indiana to South Korea, while its Japanese auto rivals Honda and Nissan plan to increase production in the U.S. While U.S. automakers continue to expand to the high-growth markets in Asia, General Motors has vowed to invest $2 billion in U.S. factories by 2014.
Siemens is building gas turbines in North Carolina to ship to Saudi Arabia for construction of a 4-gigawatt power plant, while Rolls-Royce recently opened a new aircraft engine parts manufacturing facility in Virginia, citing among other things lower labor costs.
The reshoring moves come as average manufacturing costs continue to fall in the U.S. BCG estimates that they will be 8% lower than in the U.K. in 2015, 15% lower than in both Germany and France, 21% lower than in Japan and 22% lower than in Italy.
China will still be about 7% cheaper than the U.S. but that doesn’t include the high cost to ship bulk items around the world.
A decline in labor costs are expected to help give the U.S. a competitive advantage in manufacturing compared with some of its developed peers, where they will be paying workers anywhere from 20% to 45% more, BCG estimates.
Lower energy and gas costs, led by the recovery of deposits in the oil-rich Bakken and Marcellus Shales, are also expected to help.
“The signs pointing to continued export growth offer further evidence that the U.S. is poised for a manufacturing renaissance between 2015 and 2020,” said Harold Sirkin, a senior partner at BCG who coauthored the research.
In Manufacturing Shift, Made in U.S. but Sold in China
UncategorizedSeptember 20, 2012
Yes, he did say China.
Mr. Abel’s company, Watermark Designs in Brooklyn, is standing history on its head: it is making plumbing parts and shipping them to China.
After generations of manufacturers in New York and across the United States folded because they were unable to compete with imports, Watermark, with its only factory in the East New York section of Brooklyn, has managed to crack the code. Instead of trying to make Watermark’s products cheaper, Mr. Abel has prospered by first making them more expensive — offering custom-made fixtures unique to each building — and then figuring out how to do that at lower cost. The company has supplied thousands of fixtures to six new luxury hotels and condominiums being built in Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong.
“The days of mass producing in New York City are gone,” Mr. Abel said. “If you were producing nuts and bolts by the tens of thousands 50 years ago, you’re not going to do it today. But creativity, or uniqueness or design is definitely something that can flourish in New York.”
Just as they have in many parts of the country, exports have taken up the slack for the business that Watermark lost during the economic downturn that began in 2008. The New York metropolitan area led the nation last year in exports, rising to $105 billion, its highest ever, from $85 billion in 2010, according to a report released last week by the International Trade Administration, a branch of the United States Department of Commerce that supports companies doing business overseas.
Fencing and flooring for dance clubs, stadiums, and big tents are being made in the Bronx by Signature Fencing and Flooring and shipped to South Africa, Japan, Britain and India. From Medford, on Long Island, Enecon, which makes corrosion-resistant coatings for industrial equipment, ships to 65 countries.
Manufacturing jobs in New York have declined by about 80 percent from a high of 1.1 million jobs in 1947, all but shutting down what had been a heavily trod avenue into the middle class for immigrants and people without advanced educations.
Mr. Abel, who was born in Israel, grew up in the Bronx and studied engineering at the City College of New York and Columbia University, started his business in 1976 in a small metal plating company that his father ran from a 2,000-square-foot storefront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. For a number of years, it did well and grew by refinishing inexpensive parts and selling them through neighborhood bath stores and the early home improvement centers. Mr. Abel moved into supplying high-end fixtures just as the city was entering a period of luxury construction.
It was a strong strategy, made possible, Mr. Abel said, by his son Avi, who joined the business after graduating from the State University of New York at Binghamton (now Binghamton University) and among other things, overhauled its design capabilities. Around 2006, Watermark bought a three-dimensional printer for $60,000. It works like an ink jet printer, except that it squirts molten plastic to build a form, instead of ink onto paper.
Robert Brenner, 26, a design engineer for the company, showed a plastic prototype of a handle made to an architect’s specifications. “This took three to four hours,” he said.
After the prototype is approved, Watermark tunes its lathes and milling machines to make the actual parts. In such a world, cheap labor is a dwindling advantage. “I can get the best equipment,” Mr. Abel said. “I can’t get someone to operate it — machinists, machine programmers, people with knowledge how to operate sophisticated equipment, they’re not there.”
Nearly 40 years after starting in the storefront, the company employs 45 people in 55,000 square feet. Most of the workers have been with the company for 10 years or more. Besides high-tech equipment, the company now has something else that wasn’t available years ago — Brooklyn chic.
“My son says we should stand on a box and shout it loud: ‘This is made not only in the U.S.A., but in Brooklyn,’ ” Mr. Abel said, “It’s what Paris had been. We have become a design mecca.”
Contact JIM DWYER
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Twitter: @jimdwyernyt
Living Paycheck To Paycheck: Two-Thirds Of Americans Are Struggling To Get By
UncategorizedPosted: 09/20/2012
In 2006, 65 percent of respondents reported living paycheck to paycheck, a figure that shot up to 72 percent in 2010 in the wake of the recession.
The survey was released during a week when a video of Republican Mitt Romney sparked a national conversation about the 47 percent of Americans who, Romney told donors, don’t pay income taxes and are dependent on government.
Tracy Martinez knows the feeling of living paycheck to paycheck.
The San Antonio woman has a college degree. She and her husband both work, but Martinez still holds her breath that she won’t have any emergencies come up, especially in the days right before payday.
“It seems like all the money goes away so quickly,” she said. “It’s kind of scary.”
Wendy Kowalik, president of the San Antonio financial planning firm Predico Partners, called the study “disturbing, but not surprising.”
Saving money is becoming more difficult, if not impossible, for more U.S. workers, Kowalik said.
“All of us in the industry are seeing it more often, that more and more clients are unable to save for the future,” she said.
The main reason Kowalik’s clients live paycheck to paycheck is that they have come to see luxuries as essential expenses, she said.
“Cable used to be a luxury. Now it’s expected,” she said. “People have an expectation that they should have a mobile phone, you should be able to have the Internet. People are going to have to change their outlook and put things into perspective.”
The American Payroll Association, a trade group for more than 20,000 people who prepare checks, said it conducted the online survey between May and Sept. 7. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percent.
The Made In America Movement Teams Up With All American Clothing Co.
UncategorizedSeptember 20, 2012
The Made In America Movement also supports American manufacturers by enlisting hundreds of them on their website. All companies who are listed are invitation only and must pass a series of reviews and inspections to prove they are USA Made. Companies who are part of the Made in America Movement stretch from Our USA Magazine to Dave Matthews and his Dreaming Tree Wines. All share a USA Made passion as each take pride in providing items that make a difference in the creation of U.S. jobs.
The Made In America Movement and its members care for the people in the United States. All members of the organization carry a passion for doing their part to create jobs in today`s economy. For more information on The Made In America Movement and its members, please visit http://www.themadeinamericamovement.com.
About All American Clothing Co:
All American Clothing Co. offers you high quality USA Made jeans and clothing at an affordable price. The company offers a unique ‘Traceability’ program in which each jean comes with a ‘traceability’ number. Enter the number at http://www.allamericanclothing.com and they will tell you exactly which American farmers and mill were involved in producing your jean.
Logan Beam
All American Clothing Co.
888-937-8009
Email
Margarita Mendoza
The Made in America Movement
914-776-8660
Email
A Label That Has Regained Its Luster
UncategorizedSeptember 14, 2012
Times have changed. Even as the “Made in the U.S.A.” label has grown scarce, thanks to the offshore manufacturing in apparel and other industries, it has acquired cachet as a signifier of old-school craftsmanship, even luxury.
The movement has come far enough that Mr. Schiff, a former advertising executive from Miami, believed the time was right to start a Gilt-like shopping site for the Americana set, selling items like shuttle-loom jeans, lace baby dolls and a 19th-century-style baseball made of leather sourced from a Chicago tannery.
“The old ‘Buy American’ is get something lousy and pay more,” said Mr. Schiff, 45. Now “it’s a premium product.”
Style bloggers were among the early adopters. “ ‘Made in U.S.A.’ has gone through a rebranding of sorts,” said Michael Williams, whose popular men’s style blog, A Continuous Lean, has become an online clubhouse for devotees of American-made heritage labels like Red Wing Shoes and Filson.
But the embrace of domestic goods has also moved beyond scruffy D.J. types in Brooklyn who plunk down $275 for a pair of hand-sewn dungarees sewn from Cone denim from the company’s White Oak plant in North Carolina. The adherents now include “urban creatives, high-net-worth individuals, locavores, liberals, conservatives,” said Mr. Williams, who also represents some of these heritage brands as a marketing consultant.
In other words, Americana chic has gone mainstream. Just visit the nearest mall. Club Monaco unveiled a Made in the USA collection last year, in collaboration with Mr. Williams. J. Crew cashes in on Americana chic by selling domestically manufactured Alden shoes, Levi’s Vintage Clothing jeans and Billykirk leather goods. Joseph Abboud’s home page trumpets its collections as “Made in the New America.”
The newfound pride also extends to American cities and smaller communities. Made in Brooklyn is a phenomenon so self-aware, there are stores like By Brooklyn that specialize in products made in the borough. Similarly, an old shoe-polish brand called Shinola has recently been revived to make upscale watches, bicycles and other crafted goods in Detroit and is being promoted as “Made in Detroit.”
And in a survey last year of 1,300 affluent shoppers by Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based consulting and marketing group, respondents ranked the United States first (higher than Italy or France) in perceived manufacturing quality of luxury goods.
Indeed, the “Made in the U.S.A.” label has become chic in the eyes of well-heeled consumers not just in the United States, but also in Asia, said Paulette Garafalo, the president for international, wholesale and manufacturing at Brooks Brothers, which has increased production of shirts, suits and neckwear at its three American factories to meet growing demand. “People want the credibility of an American brand,” she said.
The flight of American factory jobs has even become a heated issue in the presidential race, with President Obama and Mitt Romney trading jabs over being the “Outsourcer in Chief,” to use Mr. Romney’s phrase.
But while American-made goods are now fashionable, few have been willing to stake their professional future on it quite like Mr. Schiff. A former advertising executive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami, who oversaw the introduction of Coke Zero, he left the firm in April to start Made with two other veterans from the agency, Scott Prindle and John Kieselhorst.
In a sense, they started two companies, which are based in Boulder, Colo.: Made Collection, the flash-sale site, and Made Movement, an advertising agency that represents companies that manufacture only in America. (“If Apple came to us, we’d have to turn them down,” Mr. Schiff said.)
Unlike the typical Buy American sites, which feature crude graphics and a low-budget hodgepodge of pliers and rain boots, Made Collection has the slick yet earthy look of a Madewell campaign. Edie Ure, a former designer for Ralph Lauren and Anthropologie, serves as the site’s curator, and she gives special consideration to design-forward wares that would not be out of place in a Monocle magazine gift guide.
Recent flash-sale items included a knot-back black swimsuit from Cala Ossidiana, a swimwear company based in New York. It sells for $295 and, according to a graphic accompanying each item, supports six American workers. For those with humbler tastes, there was an O.C.E. Hickory work shirt, produced by inmates in the Oregon correctional system as part of its job-training program, for $26.99.
The company grew out of Mr. Schiff’s conviction that a manufacturing revival was crucial to a lasting economic recovery.
Made now counts 26 employees, and with a minimum of publicity, its site has 10,000 members. The ad agency has signed seven clients, including Emeco chairs, a Pennsylvania-based design company whose product sells at Design Within Reach, and New Belgium Brewing, based in Fort Collins, Colo., which brews Fat Tire ale.
Mr. Schiff practices what he preaches. For a recent lunch at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, he wore Levi’s premium shuttle-loom 501s made in Los Angeles. His tattooed arms poked out of a blue checked shirt by the boutique design house 8.15 August Fifteenth, made in New York City, which he spruced up with a seersucker bow tie by Gitman Bros., made in North Carolina. The only smudge on the stars-and-stripes tableau was his pair of Vans sneakers made in China.
“I would say most days, I’m at about 75 percent,” he said, referring to how much of his outfit is American made. He never wants to become a fanatic, however. “If you become obsessive about it,” he added, “it’s an imposition versus a choice.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 16, 2012, on page ST16 of t
he Ne
w York edition with the headline: A Label That Has Regained Its Luster.
Outsourcing May Cause High Unemployment and Manufacturing Decline
American Made, Domestic Sourcing, Made in USA, Manufacturing, OutsourcingAll American Clothing Co., proud corporate members of The Made in America Movement, announces a new warning label that raises awareness of the consequences of outsourcing and buying foreign-made items in the United States. Read more
Advanced Solar CPV Manufacturing Plant to Open in NC this Month
UncategorizedBY ANDREW BURGER
Swimming Against the TideSemprius is opening its CPV plant amidst a general backdrop of solar energy market and industry turmoil, manufacturing plant slowdowns, shutdowns, and layoffs — both in the US and other other major solar-producing countries, including Germany and China. Management and its investors believe that the combination of high-efficiency and low-cost production will prove the company viable in a fiercely competitive global solar PV market that governments around the world have targeted as a low-carbon, green economy growth engine.
A SunShot CPV Manufacturer Ready to Go Commercial
In its search for a location to build a manufacturing plant to commercialize its CPV cells and modules, Semprius landed in Henderson, NC. Construction of its 50,000-square-foot plant began earlier this year, with the state government and local agencies contributing $7.9 million towards construction.
Semprius’ patented micro-transfer printing process allows thousands of its concentrated solar PV cells (CPV) to be transferred from a growth substrate to a semiconductor wafer or other form factor. It’s a continuous, massive parallel process that runs continuously and allows the growth substrate to be used repeatedly, which cuts costs dramatically, according to NREL and Semprius.
U.S. to File W.T.O. Case Against China Over Cars
UncategorizedSeptember 16, 2012
President Obama plans to announce the move on Monday during a visit to Ohio, one of the most important of the battleground states and a place where the president is trying to capitalize on his bailout of the auto industry. A poll by NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist College last week showed Mr. Obama building a significant lead in Ohio.
The upper Midwestern states have emerged as a key battleground in the presidential election, particularly Ohio, which has rivaled Florida in recent presidential elections as the most hard-fought state of all. Ohio is also the hub of the American auto parts industry, which has suffered heavily from job losses that have coincided with surging imports of auto parts from China.
Auto parts employment in the United States has dropped by about one-half from 2001 to 2010, as imports from China grew nearly sevenfold over the same period, according to data provided by the senior official, who insisted on anonymity citing an administration policy banning on-the-record comments on a new policy before an official announcement is made. Auto parts manufacturers directly employ 54,200 people in Ohio, and when suppliers like steel makers are included, the auto industry accounts for 850,000 jobs in the state, or 12.4 percent of total employment there.
But auto industry experts debate the extent to which those imports have been directly responsible for the closing of factories and for cutbacks at other plants, as ever-increasing automation has also played some role. The slowing of the American auto market since 2008 has had an effect as well, although auto sales have begun to recover in recent months.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly accused the Obama administration of not doing enough to challenge China on trade and currency policies. But the timing of the administration case, coming so soon before the elections, makes it likely that the Chinese government will accuse President Obama of playing politics — an accusation already made by Chinese officials, particularly those with close ties to affected industries, in connection with recent trade cases involving solar panels.
Asked whether the trade cases against China were timed for political impact, the senior administration official replied by e-mail that “President Obama has prioritized enforcement of Americans’ rights in the global trading system from day one, and this administration has a consistent record of action to support American jobs.”
The press office at China’s commerce ministry had no comment when told by telephone on Monday morning of the planned trade case, asking for a fax of questions, which did not yield an immediate reply. Chinese officials have denied in general that they subsidize exports.
Chinese exports have surged particularly in the past year, as the Chinese economy has slowed sharply, leaving particularly the domestic Chinese automakers with huge inventories of unsold cars that they are seeking to sell overseas.
Speakers repeatedly mentioned during the Democratic convention the federal government bailout for the Detroit auto industry three years ago, following a perception that the bailout will prove politically advantageous in key states. By contrast, speakers during the Republican convention generally avoided the subject.
The administration also plans to take further legal steps on Monday in a W.T.O. case already pending against China over its imposition of steep anti-dumping duties last winter against more than 80 percent of American car exports to China. That case, described by people in China as largely the result of factional rivalries in Beijing that produced a need to take a strong stand against the United States, has begun to shift the focus of trade tensions between the United States and China toward the automotive sector.
The administration has been mulling a possible W.T.O case against China in the auto sector since at least last winter, and has been encouraged by unions to do so, particularly the United Steel Workers.