With my book, Simply American, finished and published, I plan on getting back to blogging in earnest again. Look for a about a post a week, on American made products, American jobs and American stories. I can’t wait to get at it again!
Well, its been a long time in the writing, about six years I figure, but my book Simply American, was finally published this week. To be completely accurate, I finally published my book this week on Lulu, a self publishing platform. If you would like to order a soft copy book, just click on this link to Lulu; you can also order a copy of Simply American as an eBook by clicking on the link above. Within three weeks, the Simply American eBook will be available on Amazon.
Simply American calls on its readers to support working class jobs in this Country by buying the products already being made by members of our extended American family at thousands of American manufacturing firms. Seven iconic American consumer goods firms are featured in Simply American: Allen Edmonds, Crane Paper, Homer Laughlin China Company, Hart Schaffner Marx, Libman, Sub-Zero and Wigwam.
In the next few weeks, I will be taking a Simply American website live and also creating a Simply American Instagram channel. Starting in January, a Simply American podcast will debut featuring stories of our American brothers and sisters who make quality American made products everyday.
So I would encourage you to order a copy of Simply American. And I would really encourage you to always look for the American alternative for any product you might need to purchase on your next shopping opportunity.
I don’t know about you, but my favorite NFL game of the week is always NBC’s Sunday Night Football with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. Visually it is amazing and I like the repartee between Collinsworth and Michaels. I am not alone in my opinion on this. But aside from the program’s amazing production values, there is another feature of NBC Sunday Night Football I really love: their consistent focus on American firms making great stuff that Americans like you and I can purchase. And by purchasing American products, you and I can provide jobs for members of our extended American family.
A couple of Sundays ago, Al and Cris visited Buffalo to broadcast the Bills – Jets game. The Bills play at New Era Field. New Era Cap Company purchased the naming rights for the Bill’s stadium last summer. Not surprisingly, New Era’s amazing caps were featured during the broadcast; shots of local craftspeople sewing the caps were great to see.
What today is New Era was founded in 1920 by German immigrant Ehrhard Koch as e. Koch Cap Co. Ehrhard got his hat company started by borrowing $5000 from his aunt. Koch began making caps on the third floor of 1830 Genesee Street, on the corner of Bailey Ave. in Buffalo, N.Y. Koch’s first 14 employees including Ehrhardt’s sister Rose. Ehrhardt’s son, Harold, and Rose’s son Wally Domas, soon started working there well before graduating from high school. In 1920, the company produced 60,000 caps. In 1922, Koch renamed his company New Era caps. Wikipedia has an amazing history on the firm.
Every MLB player wears a New Era cap. Growing up in California, there was only one New Era cap I would ever be caught wearing.
These days my favored New Era cap is different.
But of course there is one New Era cap I wouldn’t wear even if you gave me one for free.
Every player in the Nippon Professional Baseball league also sports a New Era cap. Hanshin Tigers cap anyone?
New Era makes great NHL caps that surely would have pleased Bobby Hull,
or Ken Dryden.
A couple of years ago, New Era became the official on-field cap provider for the National Football League. My New Era NFL lid of choice is obvious.
What’s that emblem on the right side of the New Era Seahawks cap? Oh yeah, that’s a depiction of the Super Bowl Trophy we won two years ago.
If you are in the market for a great hat made by Americans in Buffalo, look no further than New Era. New Era has really lived out its early motto:“Quality First, Quantity Will Follow.”
The other Buffalo manufacturing firm that was featured on NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast a few weeks back was Super Chexx. Super Chexx make the most amazing table hockey games.
The folks at Super Chexx can allow you to customize your table hockey set to your heart’s content. Are the Leafs your team of choice? No problem
Can’t get enough of the Habs/Bruins rivalry? Super Chexx has got you covered.
So if you want to be the most popular family in your neighborhood, just order up a Super Chexx table hockey unit. Just make sure you have plenty of refreshments on hand for the hordes of hockey fans that will soon begin showing up at your door.
The NBC Sunday Night Football game this week matches my 4-1 Seattle Seahawks against the 3-3 Arizona Cardinals in Arizona. I am expecting a win, but regardless it should be a good game. I wonder what Arizona products Al and Cris might feature this week. Maybe bags from the Lifetime Leather Company.
Or one of the myriad of other great products made in Arizona and featured on Jim and Laura Hofman’s Arizona page from their great website, State Gifts USA. So let’s hope for a great game between the Seahawks and the Cardinals, and try to figure out what Al and Kris will get up to during the game.
Hopefully nothing like that.
This summer, my son Ben and I have been doing loads of hiking. Ben is a student at Western Washington University located in Bellingham and has been living up in Bellingham this summer prior to his senior year at Western. We decided that this summer we wanted to hike in the North Cascades National Park, which is southeast of Bellingham. So we have been hiking a lot this summer. Our first hike was to Blue Lake off the North Cascades Highway.
We saw a family of these guys up above the lake.
Next we drove to the end of the Mount Baker Highway and hiked up the Table Mountain Trail.
Last week, we hiked the Park Butte trail off the North Cascades Highway and it was absolutely spectacular.
All these hikes share a few characteristics. First, they are all in my home State of Washington. Second, I had the great pleasure of being able to enjoy them with my amazing son Benjamin. And third, by the time we got back to the car at the end of the hike, I was so thirsty that I was considering drinking my own urine. Luckily, I didn’t have to engage in that disgusting task because when we arrived at the car, we were greeted by icy cold beverages. How you ask did we have access to icy cold beverages since the interior temperature of our car and trunk exceeded the temperature on the surface of the sun? Our beverages were icy cold because they were tucked inside our Igloo MAXCOLD PLAYMATE ELITE at Target for less than fifteen bucks.
Our Igloo Playmate Elite cooler holds 30 cans of pop, is very rugged and is easy to open and close. Best of all, our Igloo cooler is manufactured by members of our extended American family in Waller County, Texas! So if you need some cold beverages on a warm day this summer, look no further than Igloo. You will benefit from cold beverages on a hot day and the American workers at the Igloo manufacturing facility in Texas will benefit from a job that allows them to support themselves, their families and their community.
Now get shopping!
I have written about Maker’s row in the past. Ever since I learned about the folks at Maker’s Row a couple of years ago, I have followed their progress closely. So I was very happy to see the firm and one of its founders, Matthew Burnett, get some great press recently. If you want to start making a product in the U.S. but don’t know where to start, Maker’s row should be your first stop.
Let’s say you have an idea for a very cool overnight bag. You pay the Maker’s row measly $20 a month subscription fee and in return you get access to their digital catalog of over 6,000 U.S. manufacturers. For each of those manufacturers you get contact info, reviews, photos and videos showcasing the manufacturer’s capabilities.
I subscribe to the Maker’s row daily update program, and the amount of work they put in creating content and resources that are useful for budding domestic manufacturers is staggering. For example, in just the last few weeks they have published great articles on the difference between sales and marketing, jumpstarting an apparel brand, and manufacturing 101. If you want to start manufacturing a consumer product in the U.S., you would be nuts to embark on that quest without partnering with Maker’s row.
So if you are a budding American manufacturer who longs to have your American product made by members of your extended American family, Maker’s row should be your first stop. For a pittance a month, you can partner with the force in the Made in America movement at work today. So contact Maker’s row today! What are you waiting for?
Every once in a while, an American firm makes a statement about their support for American manufacturing and American workers. Such a statement was recently made by Marriott, the iconic American hotel company. Marriott recently announced that it would be supplying its American hotels with towels made by Standard Textile here in the U.S. Annually, Marriott will be buying 2.6 million bath towels and 4.9 million hand towels made in America, with American cotton, by members of our extended American family. In order to meet this demand, Standard Textile is adding 150 manufacturing jobs at its production facilities in the States. And according to Abha Bhattarai of The Washington Post, this move will not cost Marriott a dime more than it is paying now.
While Marriott’s decision to support American jobs by buying American made products is huge, it should be just the beginning. What if all the hotel chains in the U.S. made a similar commitment? Think how many more manufacturing jobs would be created for members of our extended American family? So come on Sheraton! Get with the program Westin! Don’t be a slacker Hyatt! If all the other American hotel chains had the commitment to support American workers that Marriott has, lots of Americans, now out of work, would be employed.
The best way to support Marriott’s American made initiative is simple; if you are planning a trip somewhere and need a hotel to stay at during your visit, I got one word for you: Marriott! If you are traveling on business and the travel planner at your firm books you at a hotel other than Marriott, mention Marriott’s bold program to support American manufacturing and American workers to the hotel’s general manager. Who knows, you could play a role in that hotel chain getting on board with Marriott’s bold vision to support American workers. What a deal!
My colleague Don Woodworth was doing some decorating in his office the other day and one of the new bits of decor he added was a new area rug. I asked Don where his new rug was made and he proudly told me it was made by members of our extended American family at Mohawk Industries. I was intrigued, so I spent a bit of time looking into Mohawk and am I glad I did!
Mohawk Industries is located in Georgia and has a long illustrious history. According to Wikipedia, William Shuttleworth and his four sons began making carpet in New York State in 1875 and adopted the Mohawk Carpet Mills name in 1920. Today the firm makes carpet and rugs, ceramic tile, natural stone and hardwood flooring, and laminate flooring. Mohawk has several lines to choose from.
Mohawk’s American Rug Craftsman line of rugs are made in two communities in North Georgia: Sugar Valley and Calhoun. As an aside, North Georgia looks like a beautiful part of our country to visit.
There are hundreds of rugs to choose from in Mohawk’s American Rug Craftsman line, but my three favorites are the Checkered Past in Walnut,
the Emerson,
and the Western Prairie.
Mohawk Home offers rugs for any room in and outside your house. Rugs for your front porch,
rugs for your entryway,
rugs for your living room,
rugs for your bathroom,
and even rugs for your deck.
Karastan rugs and carpets are made by Mohawk in Eden, North Carolina. If you have never seen Karastan before, you are in for a very pleasant surprise. Karastan is as good as it gets and Karastan products are all made by members of our extended American family. A few of my favorite Karastan rugs are the Southwood Croissant rectangle,
the Oxford Navy,
and the Anastasia Robin’s Egg.
I strongly encourage you to read the American Rug Craftsman story, learn more about the history of Karastan and watch some very nice videos about Mohawk and Karastan. Another reason I really recommend Mohawk products is their amazing commitment to reducing their footprint on the American environment by producing ecologically savvy products through their GreenWorks initiative. Mohawks’s exclusive Everstrand fiber is the only 100 percent post-consumer recycled material rug fiber in the industry and Mohawk’s exclusive Smartstrand fiber is made with DuPont Sorona, a renewable sourced polymer made with actual corn. Mohawk also offer doormats created from recycled post-consumer tires and rug pads made of recycled content.
Mohawk is playing a huge role in using “waste products” that absent Mohawk’s efforts would end up in your local land fill. Did you know one out of every five PET plastic bottles recycled in the United States is recycled by Mohawk? That’s over 3 billion bottles annually that are used to create Mohawk’s recycled fibers, like Everstrand. Annually Mohawk Home recycles over 30 million pounds of rubber tires, one of the largest and most hazardous types of post-consumer waste, and gives them new life as doormats.
Mohawk’s durable doormats have an innovative scraping surface that cleans shoes while hiding dirt in recessed channels. The slip-resistant surface repels water, which is great for traction in all-weather conditions. Given the deluges of rain we routinely suffer here in Seattle, I plan on purchasing a new Mohawk doormat pronto!
Mohawk is an amazing American manufacturing firm providing employment for hundreds of members of our extended American family working in Georgia. Buying Mohawk rugs is a win-win-win proposition. First, you are going to get the most well made stylish rug on the market. Second, your purchase of Mohawk rugs will provide employment to members of our extended American family working in Georgia. And finally, by buying Mohawk rugs you will help ensure that our Country’s environment is kept ship-shape. What a deal!
Now get shopping for some Mohawk rugs!
