re: Will you try to buy less made in China

quote:

---

I don't think it's advertised properly. Im no expert on advertising...but if I were trying to market and sell made in America vs my competition made in China? I would hammer their arse with the nastiest rhetoric of China possible. Educate your customers on why they should buy American

---

Trust me, we were bold about it, and our particular niche is actually very sensitive to where things are made (America). Our customers are more rural and tend to be more patriotic.

None of it mattered the least bit when it was time to pony up money. The other problem is that advertizing more about the MIA items costs money, which eats even further into the slim profit margin.

I know this comes off as lecturing, but our customers' cannot feel our American goods quality in comparison to the chinese stuff as it is online sales 100%. They have to make a decision based on pictures alone, and with textiles that isn't easy to display. So the main differentiation is price.

quote:

---

Another example, I wanted to get my brother in law a high end pocket knife for Xmas. I live in NW Arkansas, and had heard about AG RUSSELL knives. The story is a local guy from back in the day making these high quality knives.

This girl kind of scoffed at me and let me know "oh no, we contract that stuff out to other countries." She said this as if it were a GOOD thing. I couldn't believe my ears. I asked her I said you mean with this story and advertising these knives not only aren't even made in Arkansas...but are made in China? She was taken aback I had a problem with it...needless to say I didn't buy an AG RUSSELL knife for my brother in law. Wound up buying a Case knife instead. Kind of generic but at least they are 100% manufactured and assembled on our soil.

---

I can't speak to walk in stores, but a lot of companies do everything they can to not advertize things are made in china. It's not that most are dishonest, but that as I said before, most people are fine with buying Chinese as long as their nose isn't rubbed in it. A few things you see that will mean it's not made in the usa:
- Shipping times of longer than 3-5 days for custom items
- anything that says 'ships from the USA' is stocked at a US warehouse, but made elsewhere. (still going to be better than outright shipped from China, because someone QC'd it in the US and money is staying in the USA for that storage)
- almost any custom printed items, period.
- it's on Amazon. There is almost nothing on that site made outside China, and a lot of the 'made in America' or 'Made in Italy' etc stuff is just made in China and some final assembly (or even just the shirt tag) is added at a warehouse in the USA. It's Walmart x 10. Most of the vendors are actually just Arab, Chinese, or Vietnamese people who buy stuff on aliexpress and resell it on Amazon directly. They never see the items at all, just pick up the oversupply from the factories.