Does anybody else feel like buying American Made is important? Or is it just a gimmick used by companies to charge more for their products? Is there any actual value in buying things that are made in the USA? Perhaps it comes down to one's individual value system. In this blog post, we’d like to share with you some of our values and why we choose to make our sportswear in the USA.
When we started Big Ocean Sport, one of our core values was to make our gear in a responsible way. To us, that includes making every effort to manufacture our apparel domestically. The majority of our gear is either 100% made in the USA or made in the USA from imported fabrics/materials. If a product is not American Made, we'll tell you...transparency is important to us!
You might be saying to yourself: "Who cares where it's made, I just want the best price." We understand that choice, but we would like to provide you with another option. Speaking from experience, one of the most frustrating things for us is the lack of American-made options when buying fishing apparel. There are many reasons a company chooses to offshore its manufacturing, but it ultimately comes down to one key factor: COST.
Yes, manufacturing in the USA is more expensive, but we feel strongly it's worth the effort and hope our customers will share our sentiment once they understand why it is important to us. When you buy American made, you're speaking with your dollars. You're saying you care about our economy, the environment and the future of the manufacturing industry in this country.
Buying American Made apparel helps to revive a once dying industry, creating more jobs for hard working Americans, in humane conditions, for decent wages. Domestic factories are also held to environmental regulations, standards and practices that many other countries are not. For us, being able to shake the hand of the person who made one of our shirts is a pretty cool experience, and it completely validates our efforts.
Sourcing performance fabrics that are made in the USA is not easy, and we are determined to only use the highest quality fabrics in our gear. That means importing some materials is necessary. However, the value-added cut and sew activities for our domestically manufactured collection are all performed by our factory partners located in the US.
One of the hot topics during this political season is bringing jobs back to the USA, especially manufacturing jobs. Forget all the rhetoric, we are part of a movement of companies that are already making things here. Ultimately the choice is in the hands of you the consumer...we hope you'll choose Big Ocean Sport. Check out our made in the USA collection here: Made In The USA Collection
