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Made In America. So What?

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STATE Optical Co.

In our business we talk a lot about WIFT or, “what’s in it for them?” Our sales managers use the phrase to ensure our sales representatives always know that what we’re asking them to do will ultimately (or immediately) benefit each of them individually. We also use it from a marketing and customer service perspective. With every initiative, policy, or promotion we have to be asking ourselves, “what’s in it for the customer?”

In 2012 when we decided to build our new factory in the US, and make our luxury eyewear stateside (something less than 1% of our peers were doing), we predicted it would garner us goodwill from our industry, from the media, from politicians, and hopefully from consumers. But knowing the failed history of American eyewear manufactures that came before us, we didn’t feel like that goodwill alone would be enough to make this venture successful. As with every other decision we make for our company, we had to ask, “what’s in it for them”?

STATE Optical Co.

We knew that there was a demand for eyewear stamped with the words, “made in USA”. We knew a certain number of customers would want to buy it for that reason alone. But we also knew that there was no way for us to make a product that could compete on price with what’s made in China. We were going to have to make a luxury product that could compete on quality. And that luxury product wasn’t going to be inexpensive. In fact, our eyewear ranges in retail price between $325 and $425.

One thing we were sure of was that we couldn’t ask consumers to pay a premium for our eyewear just because it was made in the US. We had to craft a premium product, and then explain why making it in America actually benefits them.

From a business perspective, there are a lot of inherent advantages to owning your own domestic production. First of all, you can handle your own quality control in-house, as each piece comes off the line. When you import in large quantities, that process generally has to be done in bulk, and if there’s something wrong with the shipment, you don’t learn about it until every piece has already been produced (and often until it’s been shipped overseas).

There are inventory benefits as well, which are of particular value in the eyewear industry where returns are an industry standard and inventory control is a well-known nightmare. When you import in large quantities, you enter into a guessing game: how many of this style and color am I going to be able to sell? No two styles or colors will sell equally, and those who know their business well can do a pretty good job with this guessing game, but no one is perfect. Inevitably you get this wrong occasionally. Those mistakes are costly. If you guess too low, you have backorders, which are the bane of optical retailers’ existence. Nobody likes backorders. If you guess too high, then you have overstock. What do you do with overstock? You can give it to charity, and a lot of companies like ours do, but that hardly helps your bottom line. Most companies try to sell it at off-prices overseas, but a lot of that product ends up either online or back in the US on sale at embarrassingly low retail prices that water down the perception of your brand, and irritate if not enrage your full-price retail partners.

Making things domestically allows us to control our inventory directly. Much less guessing. If a product is selling, we make more of it. If it’s not, we stop making it. No waiting 4 months for reorders, and we’re no longer forced to produce things in lots of thousands.

Finally, we can make the US labor laws work in our favor. Yes, cost of labor is much more expensive than in most other manufacturing countries, but turnover in those countries is also much higher. By hiring talented, committed professionals to craft our eyewear, then cross-training and retaining them, our team can earn their higher wages through increased care and productivity.

But so what? All these things are business benefits that help us offset the higher cost of manufacturing in the US, but they don’t really answer that question we asked at the beginning: what’s in it for them? How does producing a pair of frames in America make it a better value for the consumer?”

The answer has nothing to do with patriotism, and very little to do with America, at all. The answer has to do with independence and personal ownership.

When you make things in someone else’s factory, (in eyewear, that’s almost always overseas) you have to work around their limitations. You have to get in line with everyone else. Even if you’re working with a very high quality factory with great customer service, you’re still not their only customer. Because we manufacture STATE Optical Co. out of our own factory domestically, we have no such limitations. In fact, we custom-built our factory, from the ground up, exclusively to make STATE Optical Co. frames. That allowed us to include important fitting, performance and style elements into our eyewear that we never could have if we were making our styles overseas. These become the differentiators consumers can see and feel when they pick up our eyeglasses and try them on. That’s what they’re paying for.

We hope that Americans will be proud to wear STATE Optical eyewear because it’s made in the US. But simply wearing or buying something that’s made here shouldn’t be enough to make someone proud. They should be proud that it’s made here, and that it’s made as well or better than anything, anywhere else in the world. Otherwise, so what?