Everyone wants to feel good about the things that they buy.
Great quality at a great price with excellent customer service is critical, and for many Americans there is another factor that goes into our decision to buy one product over another: "Made in America"
There is a lot of information in those three words and they mean different things to different people. Here are a few things that Americans consider when purchasing items Made in the USA.
High Quality: In a 2013 survey by Consumer Reports, 79 percent of American customers would choose an American-made product over any other option (when that choice is available). About 60 percent of those customers that would choose the American product indicated "higher quality" as part of their decision.
Ingenuity: We're all guilty of wanting the "newest" and "best" everything. It's not always a bad thing: Maybe that new piece of technology helps you become more efficient, productive, and accurate at work. Maybe a new software package improves your company's performance. Maybe that new toy for your children provides a new and fun way to bond with them.
Regardless of why an item is on the market (and for that matter, the reasons why it was purchased), customers the world over prefer American-made products because they are cutting-edge. Americans are driven to consider the world around them, conceptualize improvements to that world, learn and develop skills to bring their concepts to reality, then market and sell that concepts to others.
Concerns about child labor, slave labor, and dangerous work conditions: No one can argue that the American work place is completely accident-free or that companies never break the rules, but American-based companies break the rules at the risk of facing legal and financial penalties. It's no secret that a safe, working-age, willing employee will be more productive with greater quality of work than a worker in sub-standard conditions.
When American customers compare products made in America to products made elsewhere, the same Consumer Reports survey that I cited before indicates that unsafe working conditions is a major consideration.
And we still have a huge reason why customers shop for American-made products remaining...
To keep jobs in the US: It's simple. If a manufacturing facility moves their entire operation to another country, the workers of that country get the jobs. The American worker is without a job, meaning that this worker may; go into debt (or deeper in debt), lose a home, lose health insurance, lose retirement, stress marriages, sell automobiles, get trained for a new job (most often without pay and at their own expense), and many other negative side-effects.
This is the #1 reason that customers cite when asked about American products. It's the people - neighbors, friends and family - that can suffer. People care about people.
That's the importance of "Made in America."
Better-quality, forward-thinking, safe-job-creating products are Made in America. We applaud every company out there that is engineering and manufacturing their products right here in the US. We're proud to stand beside you, as Rhino Shelf is engineered and manufactured in North Carolina. All of our materials are made in America, all of our labor is in America, all of our engineering is done in America and all of our jobs are located right here in North Carolina, USA.
It's a point of pride for us - along with our stellar customer service that is based...where?
In the USA.
Thank you for reading today and I hope that the next time you're at the supermarket or shopping online that you consider buying American-made!