Most of what the Buy American Campaign does happens behind the scenes: researching manufacturers, checking where products are really made, reaching out to American companies and keeping thousands of product listings accurate. Starting this month, we’re going to show that work publicly, every month. Here’s what we accomplished in September for American manufacturing.
What we built
282 new American manufacturer profiles. Our American Companies directory now has 440 published company profiles, and most of them went up this month. Every profile is researched and checked before it’s published, so shoppers can find companies that make things here.
Our first videos. We started video production this month, including a short public-service video on how to tell where a product is really made and our first video product review. You can watch them on our YouTube channel.
Four new places to find us. We launched on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok, joining Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
New stories every week. Articles this month covered new factory investments, a Maine factory making new shoes for the U.S. military, and why America’s small suppliers matter so much to the manufacturers that depend on them.
Nine new product reviews on Made in America Reviews, plus a new buying guide and a head-to-head comparison to help shoppers choose between American-made options.
A bigger Buy American Store. The store now carries more than 32,000 products.
Making American-made shopping more trustworthy
This month we uncovered a weakness in the evidence behind some older product listings in the Buy American Store. Rather than ignore it, we’re reviewing the affected products, and we’ve strengthened our import process so new products must meet a higher verification standard before they’re published.
This isn’t glamorous work, but it’s important. If we’re asking consumers to trust the Buy American Campaign, we have to earn that trust.
We also:
Built a nightly product check. It reviews hundreds of store products every night for price changes, availability, broken links and missing images, so problems get caught before shoppers run into them.
Spent carefully. When the store’s bandwidth costs climbed, we didn’t just pay for more capacity. We traced the problem to automated bots that were wasting resources, blocked them, and cut daily bandwidth use dramatically.
Improved how people find us. We connected the store to Google Search Console for the first time, giving us much better visibility into how Google discovers and indexes our products, and where we need to improve.
Who we’re connecting with
Publishing a profile is only the start. We’re reaching out to American manufacturers directly and building relationships with them. In September we contacted 26 more manufacturers. We also moved our manufacturer email to Google Workspace and properly authenticated it, fixing a delivery problem that had been preventing some of our outreach from reaching manufacturers.
Those conversations are starting to pay off. One manufacturer has agreed to our first written interview and to share photos from its operation. We look forward to sharing it with you.
What’s coming next
Manufacturing Day, October 2. We’re preparing a special tribute to the people who make things in America, along with a new article celebrating their work and its importance to American communities.
Continuing the store review, so every Made-in-USA claim is backed by solid evidence.
Help us keep building
Everything in this report takes work behind the scenes: researching manufacturers, verifying where products are made, maintaining thousands of store listings, publishing new resources and reaching out directly to American companies.
The Buy American Campaign is still in its early stages, and we’re building it with the help of a small group of supporters who believe American manufacturing is worth supporting.
If you’d like to help us do more of this work in October, please consider supporting the Buy American Campaign on Patreon.
Memberships start at just $5 a month, and individuals or businesses who’d like to contribute more can choose their own monthly amount on Patreon. Every contribution helps us research more companies, verify more products and reach more people who want to buy American.
Financial support never affects a company’s assessment, Made-in-USA determination, profile inclusion, or verification result.
Garry McDonald
Founder, Buy American Campaign
Whenever possible, choose Made in USA.
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