So here’s a tale from the “It’s OK to Make Things In This Country” File:
I’m at the home center picking up a sheet of ¾ inch birch/maple plywood for a project. The sheet is nice and straight so I pick it up to put it in the cart. That’s when I and notice the bar-code label and this three-word sentence: Made in China.
Plywood? China? Huh?
I understand globalization (to a point) and without its massive economic force the TV on the wall or the computer you’re reading—and I’m producing—this on would cost a bazillion dollars. And that markets are global. I’m a patriot, sure, but not blind to the realities of how business works. But plywood? It’s cheaper to get cut trees down and mill them in China than Pennsylvania or Idaho? Come on. Electronics and other goods I get. Plywood…That simply doesn’t add up.
And because I’m not blind to how business works, that’s very reason I have the “It’s OK to Make Things in This Country” File where I applaud companies that find ways to keep jobs and supply chains as “here” as possible. Because after all, just because you can make a product in another nation, it doesn’t mean you should.
Earning its way into the File is DaVinci Roofscapes. 100% of the company’s awesome polymer roof tiles made in the last 12 years have been made here. Boom. Nice. This process feeds our economy via taxes paid, jobs created, and of course, homes improved and beautified. What’s more, a huge portion of the supply chain (the raw stuff the tiles are made out of, etc) is stateside as well, creating what the president of the company calls a ‘multiplier effect’ that helps other businesses run well as well.
Now if we can just work out that plywood thing we can get another winner in the File. Happy Fourth of July.
