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New Showroom Opens Up World Of The All American Clothing Co. To Public.

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Visitors can tour and try on USA made items with the companies` showroom opening.
All American Clothing Co., the premier online location for USA made clothing items, announces the debut of its new concept with the opening of a showroom in its Arcanum, Ohio location. Located at 1 Pop Rite Rd, just south of Arcanum, Ohio, the showroom will feature the many American made items that All American Clothing Co. has to offer. It will also feature an All American theme with its coloration, pictures, and objects. The showroom will officially open on Friday April 5th and Saturday April 6th.

“For made in America supporters and enthusiasts, the showroom will create a unique experience into the world of All American Clothing Co. and its belief in supporting the American worker.,” said Logan Beam, Director of Marketing and Communications at All American Clothing Co. “All American Clothing Co. has always cared about the United States and the people in it. Our founders started manufacturing USA made jeans with a passion to never trade USA jobs for foreign profits. We are now able to showcase our passion, products, and services while creating a strong relationship with our customers.”

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A patriotic destination, the All American Clothing Co. showroom will provide customers the opportunity to discover the unique experiences they have to offer, like Traceability. Traceability is all about the truth of where jeans come from and offers some recognition to the hard working Americans who are involved in making jeans. All American Clothing Co. is one of the first jean companies in the world that allows customers to trace their jean all the way back to the American farmers who grew the cotton used. Each jean comes with a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ that includes a traceability number. Enter the traceability number on the All American Clothing Co. website and they will tell you exactly which farmers and mill were involved in producing that jean.

How Does Traceability Work?  Watch the video below:
The showroom will be open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Est. A knowledgeable and passionate team of customer service experts will be available to help deliver the ‘All American’ experience.

About All American Clothing Co: 
All American Clothing Co. produces high-quality jeans and apparel that are Made in USA Certified™. All American Clothing is a made in America success story in today’s economy. The entire company supports a “USA made passion” as they strive to foster loyalty among customers. All American Clothing Co. is proof that small business can grow and succeed in America today. To find out more about the passion and effort it takes to build a business in today’s economy go to http://www.allamericanclothing.com and read the tab “Our Story.”

CONTACT ALL AMERICAN CLOTHING CO.
Logan Beam
Director of Marketing and Communications
888-937-8009

Making Manufacturing Cool

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JOHN GUENTHER
It doesn’t take a fictional ad guru like Don Draper to let you know working in manufacturing has a branding problem with younger generations. The good news for the California economy is there’s a new image already being crafted.
“Manufacturing is cool. It’s not smokestacks anymore,” said Adam Hansel, president of DTL. At a recent meeting-of-minds, Hansel held up his iPhone to boast about how his company’s machines helped build the latest Apple smartphone.

And that was one of the big rallying cries at the event: find ways to tell the new story of manufacturing.

The place was the Advanced Manufacturing Summit hosted last week in Sacramento by the governor’s economic development office, GO-Biz, and the point was to get everyone on the same page about pumping up California’s advanced manufacturing sector.

“It’s never happened before: a meeting where all the universities, industry and agencies came together to talk about advanced manufacturing,” said Doug Henton, attendee and also Chairman and CEO of Collaborative Economics.

Advanced manufacturing, briefly put, means using high-tech methods to make specialized or high-tech products, hence the “no smokestacks” comment.

The forum was prompted by a White House competition to create advanced manufacturing centers around the country and drop on them the funding that goes along with winning one in your state, almost $70 million.

“California raised its hand and said ‘We’re going to take the lead,'” said Kish Rajan, director of GO-Biz, AKA the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. “We’re going to be in the pole position.”

That seems like no-brainer, since California is the largest manufacturing state in the country with 1.2 million jobs in that sector. Rajan added that manufacturing as a whole contributes $230 billion to the state’s economy.

While story of manufacturing shown in the news lately has been how it’s on the decline, shown in colorful chart after colorful chart, boosters see a big opportunity for California.

“This is a different type of manufacturing,” said Henton. “A lot of these are things that we do better. We’re good at it, such as in aerospace. These are industries using advanced tools, like making biomedical devices. We’re a leader in that.”

California’s aerospace industry is still one of the state’s strengths and is represented in its top 10 exports. While the sector might not return to the good old post-WWII or Cold War days, some see an opening in the unmanned vehicle market, of the land, sea and air variety.

“I think that’s a big place for California to play because, since it’s a knowledge-based economy, it’s about retraining workers that were already in the aerospace industry or bringing in new people to the aerospace industry around this new technology,” said Louis Stewart, deputy director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at GO-Biz.

But California has ahead of it–maybe not a cliff–but a bit of a workforce hill to climb: Older workers are retiring out of manufacturing and it’s difficult to find the youngsters with the right skills to replace them, thus the comments about making manufacturing cool to the kids these days.

One panelist jokingly mentioned creating an “MTV Cribs” to show off homes of CEO’s of advanced manufacturing companies.

Brandon Cardwell, VP of Programs at the i-GATE Innovation Hub, noted that boomers are now moving out of manufacturing workforce and workforce training isn’t keeping up with the changing labor market. Census figures from 2011 showed that 2.8 million manufacturing workers, or one-quarter of all manufacturing workers, were 55 or older.

“We need bring back shop class in high school,” said Gene Russell of the non-profit Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence.

A big bullet point was the need to get more students interested early and make a clear pathway for them to go from high school all the way to the advanced manufacturer floor. Of course, it might not hurt to let them know manufacturing jobs can make an average of 39 percent more than the overall California average wage.

“I think now is the time that we need to start connecting the stories from industry and academia so that we understand what kind of workforce needs to be come about for these future trends and then basically rebranded and tell why this new wave of advanced manufacturing is where the students should be looking at, as opposed to looking at traditional manufacturing which is not necessarily the most appealing to the younger generation,” said Stewart.

On top of getting students interested, there’s the issue of getting them trained with the right skills for these high-tech jobs. Tim Rainey, the executive director of California’s Workforce Investment Board, said most training is still modeled for big, industrial manufacturing, but the sector is now made of clusters of smaller companies.

Getting people trained up has also been made difficult by employers decreasing spending on training as an employee benefit.

To do it right, panelists said it will be vital to convince employers to invest into training partnerships with schools with funding, donation of equipment and providing more apprenticeships.

Finally, attendees broke into smaller groups for brainstorming and Rajan wrapped up the day with some words on the new effort.

“If you keep this spirit going, California, as I said this morning, is unstoppable.”

Military Must Purchase Made in America Steel

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WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), the author of legislation to ensure that armor plates for America’s military is truly “Made in America,” announced on Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Defense restored a 35-year rule requiring that steel purchased by the U.S. military be 100 percent domestically produced.
The rule, originally overturned in 2009, requires armor plated steel to be both melted and finished in the United States. Several Ohio companies, including Cleveland’s ArcelorMittal and Cliffs Natural Resources and Marion’s Nucor, are involved in the production of armor plates.

“This is a win for our military and for American companies like ArcelorMittal, Cliffs, and Nucor, that make steel for our military right here in the United States,” Brown said on Tuesday. “We know how to make steel armor plates here in America, and there’s no reason why countries like China and Russia should be making the steel used in our military’s vehicles and equipment.”

Steel armor plates are used for military vehicles, tanks, and equipment. Under regulations, specialty metals procured for defense purposes— including steel armor plate — must be produced in the United States.

Why Americans Love Small Business

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SCOTT SHANE 
Small business may be the most popular institution in America. According to a 2012 poll conducted on behalf of the Public Affairs Council, 88 percent of Americans view small business favorably. In fact, 68 percent of us would rather pay more to do business with a small business than a big one. Could America’s love of small business help broker a deal between Republicans and Democrats in Congress?
Few institutions can compete with small business in the eyes of Americans. A 2010 Pew Foundation survey found that Americans view small business more positively than they perceive churches and universities.

Small business’s favorability is remarkably stable. Gallup Organization polls in both 2010 and 2012 reported 95 percent positive views of small business among Americans.

Why do Americans love small business? Five reasons jump out from all the studies and surveys.

1. Small business owners are the embodiment of the American dream.
Americans like the gumption it takes to invest one’s life savings to follow the dream of starting a company. We are, after all, supposed to be a nation of go-getting, risk takers living in the land of opportunity.

2. Americans love the idea that big companies come from tiny ones. 
While studies show that few small businesses actually grow, and only a sliver of entrepreneurs want to do more than start a little company, virtually all big companies started small. As a nation, we love the idea that oak trees come from acorns.

3. Small business is the underdog and Americans root for the underdog.
Small business owners work more hours and make less money than the rest of us, according to the Pew Foundation. They face competition from deep pocketed big companies who — according to the perception of a significant minority of Americans  — sometimes use unfair tactics to compete, a Public Affairs Council survey found.

4. Small business owners are seen as honest and ethical. 
Only 8 percent of Americans think the CEOs of major corporations are highly ethical, but 52 percent who view small business owners as such, according to the Public Affairs Council survey.

5. Small business is seen as the backbone of a middle class way of life.
When asked who should get credit for supporting the middle class over the last half century, 51 percent of Americans picked small business — more than double the amount that chose labor unions, big companies or the federal government.

Most Americans believe small business owners are America’s job creators. A July 2012, Rasmussen survey found that 57 percent of American voters think small business owners create more jobs and generate more economic growth than either big businesses or the government.

Perhaps small business’s popularity can bridge the political divide that has paralyzed Washington. Unlike capitalism itself, small business is perceived positively by both Democrats and Republicans alike. A 2012 Gallup survey found that while nearly three times as many Democrats as Republicans view the federal government favorably, and nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats see big business in a positive light, 95 percent of Republicans and 94 percent of Democrats have a positive view of small business.

Note to Washington: Why don’t you focus on policies that help small business generate good will between the parties?

SOURCE:  Entrepreneur 

Women Miss Out on Manufacturing Gains

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By Ben Casselman
American factories are hiring again. But they aren’t hiring women.
Manufacturing, one of the hardest-hit sectors during the recession, has been a leader in the recovery, although as today’s mixed durable goods number shows, the sector has been on shakier ground of late. U.S. factories have added more than half a million workers in the past three years, with most of the gains coming in the durable-goods sector, which makes longer-lasting items like cars and dishwashers.

Women, however, haven’t seen the same gains. Female employment in the manufacturing sector has actually fallen by 13,000 in the past three years. Female durable-goods employment has been mostly flat, up a paltry 4,000 jobs.

The recovery has also been weaker for women outside manufacturing. Women’s employment didn’t hit bottom until September 2010 — six months after men’s employment started rising — and women saw shallower gains once they did start finding jobs.

But that disparity is explained, at least to a significant degree, by the fact that men were hit earlier and harder by the recession, which struck male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing with particular force. Despite their weaker gains in the recovery, women are actually closer than men to their pre-recession employment level.

Such a “catch-up” effect doesn’t explain what’s going on in manufacturing, however, as the National Women’s Law Center noted in a report today. Women lost manufacturing jobs faster than men during the recession, and have gained them back more slowly in the recovery.

The decline of women in manufacturing appears to reflect a longer-term trend. Women’s share of factory jobs rose steadily in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, peaking at just under a third — 32.2% — in the early 1990s. Since then, their share has dropped just as steadily, falling in 20 of the past 21 years. Women held 27.3% of manufacturing jobs in 2012, the lowest level since 1971.

The decline might come as a surprise given that increasing automation has made much factory work less physically demanding. But automation has also wiped out many of the jobs traditionally held by women — both factory-floor jobs such as quality control and backroom clerical positions. Additionally, many of the fastest-growing manufacturing sectors, such as fabricated metal products and machinery, have a relatively small share of women employees. And as the NWLC report points out, jobs in those sectors have gone disproportionately to men.

Manufacturing gets an outsized amount of attention given its share of the economy — less than 11% of private-sector employment for all workers, and just 6% for women. But manufacturing jobs, especially in the durable goods sector, tend to be fairly well-paying, and remain a rare path to the middle class for workers without a college degree. It’s a path that remains far less common for women than for men.

Legislation To End Tax Breaks for Companies Shipping Jobs Overseas

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Senator cosponsors Bring Jobs Home Act that rewards companies bringing jobs back to U.S.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is backing a measure to boost job creation by rewarding companies that “insource” jobs to the U.S., while ending tax breaks for those companies shipping jobs overseas.

The Bring Jobs Home Act introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow, creates a special 20 percent tax credit for the moving expenses of companies who shift operations back to the U.S. from abroad.

The bill also prevents companies from deducting from their taxes the costs associated with shipping jobs overseas. Under current law, companies can deduct 100 percent of the cost of shipping equipment overseas, terminating leases, and other expenses associated with offshoring a business-meaning that taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars annually.

“Right now, some companies are undercutting hardworking Americans by sending valuable jobs out of the country,” McCaskill said. “We shouldn’t be rewarding them for doing it. Instead, let’s use some common sense, and reduce their incentive to outsource by ending tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas, and rewarding companies that bring jobs back to the United States.”

A similar measure had bipartisan majority support in the Senate last year, but ultimately failed to advance after a Republican filibuster.

SOURCE:  PoliticalNews

Experience, Reliability Give Chinese Long Beach Electric Bus Contract

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Harry Saltzgaver
Long Beach Transit’s board voted Monday to award an $11.5 million contract for 10 all-electric buses to a firm whose parent company is Chinese-owned, noting that the bid complies with Made In America specifications and touting its large experience edge over the second bidder.
BYD Motors, the winning bidder, is a U.S. subsidiary of BYD Company Ltd., a publicly-held company in China. The other finalist, Proterra, is a private equity company out of Greenville, S.C.

LBT staff first made the recommendation to go with the BYD bid in February, but the LBT board asked to table the decision for a month to gather more information. After two study sessions, that decision was made at Monday’s meeting on a 5-2 vote, with Lori Ann Farrell and Maricela de Rivera voting no.

BYD has been in business since 1995 and sells batteries, solar panels and electric cars in addition to buses. Company officials said they plan to build a new chassis facility in California sometime next year, although the chassis for the first 10 Long Beach buses will come from China. The batteries are built in a plant in LA.

Proterra was formed in 2004 and has about 160 employees. They have sold 32 of their EcoRide BE35 electric buses and have delivered 14 (compared to 1,000 and 365 for BYD).

Both firms’ coaches carry 35 seated passengers and more than 20 standing. A primary difference is Proterra’s use of lithium-titanate batteries offering a 30-mile range where BTD uses iron-phosphate batteries with a 7.5 year warranty and a range of 118 to 163 miles.

LBT plans to use the buses on the Passport routes downtown, including trips to and from the Queen Mary. The board approved an additional $1.8 million in potential spending if a WAVE (Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification) charging system can be developed from current prototypes as a charging station at the Queen Mary stop. The $11.5 million bid includes 10 manual pug-in depot chargers, which take four hours for a full charge.

According to the staff report, the BYD system will cost significantly less than the Proterra system, saving more than $4 million, despite the lower initial cost for Proterra buses. The proven battery system and warranty were other major factors in BYD’s favor.

Money for the purchase came primarily from a Federal Transit Administration grant from the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) program, some Prop 1B money and a $700,000 grant from the Port of Long Beach’s Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Mitigation Grant Program.

SOURCE:  Gazzete

Made in USA Label Pays off For Investors

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Adam Shell,
NEW YORK — The benefits of the Made-in-the-USA marketing tagline now apply to stocks as well as shoes, SUVs and software.
How so? With Europe hobbled by debt, white-hot China cooling and emerging markets slowing, stocks of U.S. companies that get most of their revenue from U.S.-based sales are performing better than companies that do 50% or more of their sales abroad, where things aren’t going as well.

The part of the world where a company makes most of its money can be the difference between a great investment and an OK one. In the past 12 months, U.S. stocks that generate all sales at home are up an average of 18.6%, vs. a gain of 6.2% for American firms that get more than half of their revenue from abroad, Bespoke Investment Group says.

“A major theme of 2013 has clearly been a preference for U.S.-centric stocks,” says Paul Hickey, Bespoke’s co-founder. Why? “The U.S., relative to the rest of the world, is the strongest economy.”

That trend helped drive the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to an all-time closing high Thursday and a 10% first-quarter gain.

Domestically focused companies are also sporting better earnings growth as well as benefiting from inflows of capital from foreign investors that view the U.S. as a haven, Hickey says.

One of Wall Street’s biggest winners this year is media subscription service Netflix, which gets less than 3% of its sales outside the U.S., says S&P Dow Jones Indices. Netflix shares are up 104%. In contrast, tech player Qualcomm, which gets nearly 97% of revenue from abroad and recently warned of slowing growth in Asia, is up 8.2%.

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Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Paul E. Jacobs speaks at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January. (Photo: David Becker, Getty Images)

 
Nearly half, or 46%, of sales of companies in the S&P 500 occur overseas, says Howard Silverblatt, an analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Analysts also see positives in the All-American story, as they have been issuing more positive earnings revisions than negative ones in the past four weeks.

The U.S. market, and particularly domestically focused names, have held up better than foreign stock markets recently following the “Cyprus Surprise,” the latest bailout in the eurozone to spook global investors. Also driving the better performance is the spate of better-than-expected economic data this month, which prompted Barclays to up its first-quarter U.S. GDP estimate to 2.6% from 1.6%.

While U.S. shares have performed better than a broad index of foreign stocks for more than two years, the outperformance has been particularly acute since late 2012 when the U.S. averted a fiscal crisis and election-related political gridlock weighed on sentiment.

“Once the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations were settled, U.S. stocks rebounded and haven’t looked back,” Hickey says.

SOURCE:  USA Today

Our Manufacturing Troubles are Cultural, not Economic

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Flickr photo courtesy of Erich Ferdinand

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Howard A. Tullman
It’s not just that shipping is expensive and labor costs are rising. The move away from ‘things’ is much more basic.
Is the end of traditional manufacturing in sight? Should the last person out of tonight’s late shift turn off the lights for good?

I’d say yes — albeit somewhat sadly.

There are at least six different reasons that traditional manufacturing is declining. They aren’t the obvious ones you’ve heard so much about — I’m not talking about labor costs, OSHA regulations, or protesters more concerned about pollution and plant life than production. My thoughts are a little more basic. I refer to them as the 6 D’s:

Dirt
We lost the race for raw materials years ago, as China and other more foresighted countries scooped up vast quantities of the minerals, compounds and rare earths essential to the production of virtually everything cellular or digital.

Durability
In a world of instant gratification and rampant disposability — where the packaging we discard costs more than the products we consume — who really cares about making durable goods and long-lasting products? We’re sick of stuff once it’s no longer shiny, and shiny never lasts. 

Soon, new 3D printing technologies will encourage the development of even more kinds of disposable products. That’s bad for our production facilities, our population, and our planet.

Demand
Frankly, we’d rather not own anything these days. Between high maintenance costs, the devastating depreciation of everything physical, and rapid obsolescence, there’s really no reason to buy anything for the long run.  We’ve become users and renters, not owners. Zipcar provides “cars for people who don’t want one.” That says a lot more about our lives today than merely pointing out our transportation preferences.

Desire
Our desire for certain things morphs over time, and our appetites change as well. And bragging about your property and your possessions just isn’t cool any more. We’re becoming much less materialistic. In the world of “Mad Men,” four things defined a man: his home, his car, his wife, and his shoes. Just think about how little this formulation has to do with the way we see our lives today, and you’ll appreciate the massive changes coming down the pike.

Demographics
I wrote recently that kids don’t care about cars, but things are much worse for manufacturers than that. As soon as kids reach the age where they can make their own durable goods purchases, they realize they don’t have any money. Instead of saving, they spend their time sucking down lattes from Starbucks. For Generation Y, everything is about the experience and the adventure and the trip, and not about things. Things are mainly a downer and a drag.

Digital
Digital is dictating everything. Everyone realizes that good ideas last much longer and are worth a great deal more than anything you can make with your hands. Unlike even the best physical objects, ideas and some digital goods can be easily shared. Once an idea is widely shared, it’s enhanced and expanded in its scope and its power, not diminished or lessened by broad distribution. That’s how we’ll generate growth in future. By manufacturing new ideas — not iPads.

SOURCE:  INC 

U.S. Must Comply with WTO Meat-Labeling Ruling by May

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Rod Nickel
(Reuters) – The United States must bring its country-of-origin meat labeling rules into compliance with a earlier World Trade Organization ruling by May 23, 2013, according to a WTO decision on Tuesday, the Canadian government said.
The WTO ruled on June 29 that the U.S. country-of-origin labeling program, known as COOL, unfairly discriminated against Canada and Mexico because it gave less favorable treatment to beef and pork imported from those countries than to U.S. meat.
 
That decision gave the United States an unspecified amount of time to comply.

The labeling program has led to a sharp reduction in U.S. imports of Canadian pigs and cattle, because it raised costs for U.S. packers by forcing them to segregate those animals from U.S. livestock. Some U.S. groups, however, have said COOL offers consumers valuable information about the origin of their food.

“We expect that the U.S. will bring itself into compliance with its WTO obligations by May 2013 as determined by the arbitrator for the benefit of producers on both sides of the border,” Canadian International Trade Minister Ed Fast and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said in a joint statement.

“We are particularly pleased that the arbitrator determined a reasonable period of time close to that proposed by Canada and Mexico, as opposed to the much longer period suggested by the United States.”

According to the Canadian ministers, the United States asked that it be given until January 23, 2014 to comply. Canada and Mexico asked for compliance by early 2013.

Meat labels became mandatory in March 2009 after years of debate. U.S. consumer and some farm groups supported the requirement, saying consumers should have information to distinguish between U.S. and foreign products.

Big meat processors opposed the provision, which they said would unnecessarily boost costs and disrupt trade.

The U.S. labeling law requires grocers to put labels on cuts of beef, pork, lamb, chicken and ground meat or post signs that list the origin of the meat.

U.S. officials have said the WTO’s June ruling allowed the United States to continue to require country-of-origin labels, but Washington will have to alter the program to ensure it does not create an impermissible trade barrier.

“The United States remains committed to ensuring that consumers are provided with information about the origin of the beef and pork products they buy at the retail level,” Nkenge Harmon, a spokesperson for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, said on Tuesday. “We intend to bring the COOL requirements into compliance within the period of time established by the arbitrator, and we will continue to work with USDA, Congress, and interested stakeholders in order to do so.”

SOURCE:  Reuters

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