What's new
What's new

"Made In USA" Brand Name????

Greebe

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 5, 2009
Location
WV, USA
So I am curious. I see this in a lot of catalogs such as MSC and Enco.

Is there a brand named, "Made in USA". There is never any other info as a manufacturers name other than "Made in USA". Seems like a Chinese plan to get you to buy their products by misleading names.

Here is a MSC example:

MSC Item Detail

I remember a company that's name started with "American" and ended with something else. It seemed like they would be an American company but they were made in China. Didn't even ever have origins in the US.

Kind of curious if this is the same thing.

If they really are products made in the USA, then why would they not list a manufacturer?

What do you guys think?

Greebe
 
That's a REAL interesting question. I never thought about it that way, but it's certainly a point.

It seems to me that HF sold a line of power tools called Chicago Power, or something like that, that had never been anywhere near Chicago, if you get my drift...
 
I remember (probably 20+ years ago that there was a town in Japan named USA (yes it really was its name).
Several companies put offices there and were selling products branded "Made In USA).

Lee (the saw guy)
 
I don't know if its true or not but I remember my father telling about a city in Japan after WW2 that renamed them selves USA so they could say it was made in USA.
 
There is a town in Japan named Usa. It has been named Usa for a long, long time, way before World War 2. Probably since the third Century, but anyway for at least 1000 years.

Snopes says its false that any Japanese product from that town was ever marked "Made In USA". In fact, the law requires Country of Origin, not town, so even if any mythical product ever said that, it would also have said "Made in Japan" on it.

snopes.com: Made in USA

There are companies with american sounding names that make stuff in China, and elsewhere, but it says Made in China on it.

Made in USA is no guarantee of quality- plenty of shoddy stuff has been made in the USA over the years- we invented cardboard suitcases, cardboard shoe soles, and "pot metal".
 
If they really are products made in the USA, then why would they not list a manufacturer?
Lots of possible reasons but they all boil down to marketing. Private label arrangements. The distributor may be the formal manufacturer, contracting the product out to a variety of shops, many of them possibly small. The actual producer might be a famous name, who prohibits the distributor from using their name to protect premium pricing on the brand-name product. Lots of reasons ...
 
I was on the phone with Bokum tool the other day and I said to them that they happen to have a very interesting product that I really never heard of before and asked them why they aren't in the catalogs or anything. They told me they have their ways of selling to people who know them, which I am not too sure if I think is smart or not. But they also said they do sell quite a bit of product under the Made in USA name in MSC. So I do know there are some American companies behind it.

My take is it is kind of like shopping through McMaster Carr, McMaster has managed to build the trust of the consumer to the point where you know if you buy from McMaster you are getting quality but don't always get to choose the brand. In doing this McMaster is still able to source the lowest price quality brand. I have a feeling MSC is able to do the same with the Made in USA thing.

The other thing I tend to think and I believe that Bokum even hinted at this is by doing their homework MSC isn't even limited to sourcing reamers from companies with a long history and name making the things.

Likely a company like Bokum is perfectly set up to make quality reamers even if you don't necessarily know the Bokum name. So Bokum needs more money, MSC needs a cheaper supplier than their name brands and knows Bokum is very well qualified and has them make them for them.
 
My take on the MSC catalog entries is that they buy USA stuff wherever they can get it, and don't always get it from the same maker. It is a lot simpler to adopt the "Made in USA" description than to keep straight the makers of every one of their thousand drill bits, for instance. I suspect they have bins of drill bits of each size and style with packages from more than one maker in each bin.

Remember, they used to print huge catalogs, and maybe still do. Imagine how complex even the online listings would be if each item had a maker or makers listed. Then how much more interesting if they listed the makers and countries of origin for all the "Quality Import" items.

Last I looked, McMaster gave no clue at all about the maker of any of their stuff.

Larry
 
When I ordered a couple of sockets from McMaster listed as Made in USA one was
Proto and the other two were Armstrong, Not much to complain about with either
choice.
 
That's a REAL interesting question. I never thought about it that way, but it's certainly a point.

It seems to me that HF sold a line of power tools called Chicago Power, or something like that, that had never been anywhere near Chicago, if you get my drift...

You mean sorta like the Harlem Globetrotters ?

There were not from Harlem... they originated in Chicago
 
McMaster will usually give the manufacturers name if you ask when placing an order. Yesterday I ordered band saw blades and they were able to tell me that they would be Starrett brand. I have never tried that with MSC, Enco, etc.

SCOTTIE
 
So I am curious. I see this in a lot of catalogs such as MSC and Enco.

Is there a brand named, "Made in USA". There is never any other info as a manufacturers name other than "Made in USA". Seems like a Chinese plan to get you to buy their products by misleading names.

Greebe

No. The country of origin has to be known to the buyer. It is a federal law.
The Chinese don't have to devise a plan like that any way. There are enough stupid
tight wad Americans that will always go for the cheaper import.
 
A few years ago I needed to get a set of new zero flute countersinks for an aluminum job I was going to run. Looked in Travers catalog and they had a set of Weldon for about $100 and a set marked only as Import for about $33. Figured what the hell, surely the Chinese junk import ones would hold up well enough for aluminum, so, given the price difference, that's what I ordered.

They show up the next day and the first thing I notice is that the metal case doesn't look anything like the trash sheetmetal boxes coming out of China. Very well made, with a nice red enamel paint job that looked first class for this sort of box. Open the box, and there's a little card inside that says Made in West Germany.

Of course Weldon is gone now, having evidently priced themselves out of even the market of expensive tools. But, I've got quite a few Weldon zero flutes, and, on the luckiest day of their existence, Weldon never made a c'sink whose quality even began to measure up to that set of "imports".

Once I realized they held up just as good as they looked, I called back to Travers to order a couple more sets. The order taker lady told me they were out of stock and the replacements would have a different part # as they were coming from a different source. She then asked me if there was something special about these cutters, since they'd sold hundreds of sets of them in no time, with some customers buying them 10 sets at a time. I explained what I outlined up above about German quality at Chinese prices, and that those other people were probably just stocking up on a great deal just as I'd planned to do.

She said Well, I don't have any info on how or where we acquired them, but I doubt the new source for the next batch will be Germany. I was in Spartanburg a couple months later and dropped by Travers to pick up a couple things while I was there. Out of curiosity, I looked up the import c'sinks in the counter catalog and asked to see a set. The newly sourced ones were about $30 for the set, and looked like they might've been sharpened by dragging across the nearest concrete slab. Both the box and its contents were the typical "import" quality we've all come to expect.
 
I may be older than some of you,but in the 60's we actually had a pair of scissors my wife bought. They said "made in USA. They were the most horrible,crudest,crappiest scissors anyone ever saw. They looked like they were cast from iron,literally.

The key we all went by back then was to notice if U.S.A. had periods after each letter,as I just wrote. If not,it was bogus.
 
In the early 70's my parents bought a Toyota Mark II. I was given the job of cleaning it one day and noticed there was a bump under the carpet that you couldn't really see but could feel with your hand. I pulled back the carpet and half embeded in the soundproofing was a screw driver. Around this time the story of USA Japan had been circulating ... remember they were trying to scam us all with their inferior products but we knew better;). Sure enough the screw driver had made in USA without the dots between the USA letters. We kept it and used it frequently as it was a good screw driver.

Dave
 
I supply items to a catalog house that lists them with an American flag and "Made in USA".

We are required to state to the seller that the items are made in the USA using US labor - which is true - of course if we could trace back the raw materials used we would probably find that they were imported. I guess it's all a matter of definition.

You get into an interesting situation with certain firearm parts, here "Made in USA" has serious legal implications. Putting imported bits into a bubble-pack and putting an American flag on them is a real No-no.
 
It's a hell of a lot easier for them to just break it down to "US Made" and "Import" in the catalog. Otherwise they'd have to reprint the catalog every time they changed suppliers. They'll usually be able to tell you specifically who made what you're ordering, but it can vary from day to day.
 








 
Back
Top