More and more, furniture companies are bringing their jobs back to the U.S. as national and global have consumers are demanding more American-made products. By the Yard, a furniture manufacturer that operates in Wisconsin and Jordan, has increased its sales by 20 percent by having it all made on U.S. soil, according to StarTribune.com.
"The USA thing has been huge," said co-owner Deb Anderson. “More people are walking into the company's Jordan showroom because all products are made in the United States,” she said.
After a great recession and loss of millions of jobs, people want to support the U.S. economy more than ever. Buy American commercials have returned to the airwaves, stores are carrying more U.S.-made goods and several Minnesota companies are moving their operations back to the United States, according to StarTirbune.com.
Several Minnesota companies have already recommitted to bringing jobs back to their state. Major operations in the state include 3M's Scotch tape plant in Hutchinson, Graco's sprayer facility in Minneapolis, Honeywell's thermostat plant in Golden Valley and Polaris' ATV and snowmobile plant in Roseau. If the trend thrives, it could be a great boon for Minnesota’s 306,000 workers they employ, as well as cut down on shipping costs and delays.
The whole mission "is just escalating," said Steven Capozzola, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for American Manufacturing."People now get that there is a direct connection between buying American ... and supporting the U.S. economy."
But not only is it important to bring American-made products back to America, it’s also necessary to explore the global market, where American products can be exported and sold overseas. This spring, Gov. Mark Dayton and the Minnesota Trade Office ran business trade missions to South Korea, Japan and China and separately launched a campaign for local manufacturers to sell overseas for the first time, according to StarTribune.com. The goal is to create 100,000 new Minnesota jobs by 2017.
“It's important for us to be buying more products that are made in the U.S.," said Chad Moutray, chief economist at the 12,000-member National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). “At the same time, we have to recognize that we are in a global economy and so need to explore markets outside."