It’s getting easier for consumers to buy American-made goods

Renaissance of startup labels boosts options.

While some high-end companies like Brooks Brothers have always made clothing in the U.S., it’s been difficult to buy American-made casual clothing because of the textile industry consolidation in recent decades, as several mills closed. Now there’s a renaissance of startup labels selling U.S.-made products — both clothing and home goods — where the focus is on high-quality U.S. craftsmanship priced competitively with imports.

For these sellers, having everything in the entire supply chain – or nearly all – be U.S.-based is an important part to supporting local communities. Several factors and macroeconomic trends make “grown and sewn in the U.S.” possible: e-commerce lets small firms tell a story and sell directly to consumers who have an interest in natural fibers like cotton and wool, a willingness to invest in longer-lasting higherquality goods and a desire to shop local.

Not surprisingly, many of these labels started because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. At McIntosh, founder of Homegrown Cotton, was disappointed the better-quality polo shirts costing around $80 or $90 were imports.

He wanted to keep production as local as possible and guarantee it’s only his cotton in every polo, so every step of the process is done in North and South Carolina. ($69, www.homegrowncotton.com)

Taking a page out of the farmto-table movement, Anna Brakefield and Mark Yeager, fatherdaughter owners of Alabamabased Red Land Cotton, call their bedding and towel brand a “farm-to-home” product. By growing and ginning their own cotton, they create a higher-quality fiber, which is spun, woven and finished in South Carolina and Georgia before being sewn in their hometown.

Their Madeline Gray Lace sheets (sheet set starts at $230, www.redlandcotton.com) are named after the family friend who donated those original 1920s sheets for testing.

Rob McMillian, founder of Chicago-based Dearborn Denim, said when he started the company in 2016, he wanted to show that locally made goods don’t have to be more expensive. Even though the manufacturing costs are higher in Chicago than using foreign products and labor, the e-commerce route helped keep costs down. His women’s and men’s jeans cost around $60 (www.dearborndenim.com), competitive with prices of jeans from The Gap and Levi’s.

There is interest in buying U.S. products. A survey by Cotton Incorporated, the cotton industry’s research and promotion arm, showed 66 percent of consumers say they are interested in buying U.S.-made clothing made with U.S.-grown cotton. McMillian said getting people to buy still comes down to quality.

“Generally, the sentiment (from customers) is, I love the pants, and I love the fact that they’re made-in-Chicago pants. That’s the cherry on top. But we shouldn’t rely on the made-in-America angle as the sole reason to buy our pants,” he said.