Mark Andol outside of his store
A big shout out to Mark Andol in Elma, New York. If you haven’t heard of Mark, he is the owner of the “Made in America Store,” in upstate New York that has attracted quite a bit of buzz recently.
Mark’s story goes back a few years. You see, his welding company nearly went out of business after losing a major contract to sell steel posts. His company was selling them for $17. China was selling them for $14. From 2007 to 2010, he had to lay off nearly half of his 70-person work force.
His retail store has over 30,000 items for sale. His team spends about 25 hours on each item making sure that every component, down to the glue in the packaging, is 100 percent American. Keep up the good work Mark and team!
ABC News Helps the U.S. Air Force Keep the Lights On!
Courtesy of the good folks over at ABC News, as part of their ongoing ”Made in America” project, we have the following tidbit–
The U.S. Air Force is under orders to buy American-made products for construction projects, but the Air Force was having trouble finding certain goods such as light bulbs made in America. Sylvania in St. Marys, Pa., is the only place still making light bulbs in the U.S. The company churned out old fashioned incandescent light bulbs for 100 years until the government announced it was phasing them out because they weren’t energy efficient.
Workers feared they’d be out of a job if they didn’t come up with a new idea quickly. Their creation, the Sylvania SuperSaver, is a halogen bulb in the old fashioned shape. The new product not only saves energy, but also jobs. If it was not for the new bulb 700 people might have been out of work…
and our boys serving overseas would be doing some late night reading in the dark!
