Some long-time American manufacturers are still warming to consumers
The World’s Best Dish Cloth, made by Trenton Mills in Tennessee.
We’ve carried the World’s Best Dish Cloth for years.
It’s one of the few consumer products offered by Trenton Mills, an unassuming cotton mill in Trenton, Tenn., that dates to 1884 and also sells beef netting and clam bags, among other items.
When I order the striped cloths, they come stacked in a plastic bag inside a corrugated box. There’s no Trenton Mills branding on them, nothing to tell the company’s story.
I have years of personal experience using the dish cloths, so my conviction about them is real. Displaying them is another story: I’ve opted to roll them up and stack them in a wooden apple crate.
That’s one example of what it’s like to sell niche American-made products from companies that traditionally haven’t given a lot of thought to the needs of independent retailers.
Curating a challenge
As our name suggests, Stay Apparel mostly sells original graphic tees and sweatshirts.
Other items original to us have included ball caps and knit hats, stickers and stoneware mugs, felt pennants and tote bags.
And then there are the curated items that we buy, sometimes on the Faire online wholesale marketplace and other times directly from the manufacturers.
The old news reporter in me loves investigating and tracking down purposeful products, but a labor of love is still a labor. And our commitment to Made in USA at once instills discipline and poses a considerable challenge given the abundance of imports.
I was reminded of this recently as I pondered adding products from a couple of venerable American manufacturers. We’ve carried items from each one in the past and use them at home, which is the best testing ground for any potential addition to inventory.
One of the companies originated as a fundraising business. The other has deeper roots with industrial and professional customers.
The three products I would add from the companies all come in plastic bags, not retail-ready packaging.
“Our poly bag packaging is clear on one side and white on the other,” the customer service person wrote to me. “The bag package includes the [company] logo, item description, item number, UPC code and care instructions for hand-wash only.”
We can work with that, but a more polished package would help with the job of selling great American-made products to consumers.
The other company’s product, when I carried it years ago, arrived in a blank clear-plastic sleeve. A company representative whom I spoke with recently agreed that the product would be better served with a branded package; he indicated that he would see what could be done about that.
It doesn’t have to be slick, just earnest.
For example, the EZ-Duz-It can opener from the good folks at John J. Steuby Co. in Hazelwood, Mo., “manufacturers of precision machined parts and assemblies.”
The can opener, the only consumer product that Steuby makes, comes attached to red, white and blue cardboard backing adorned with stars. I’d bet that it was designed in-house, giving it a timeless authenticity that mirrors that of the product.
The verbiage on the front: “Save Jobs - Buy U.S.A.”
And that’s a compelling argument to make to our customers. We just wish that more manufacturers would help us make it.