Tag: made in America

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Entrepreneurs Features

Bulletproof

BenShot's glassware is melded with imaginative hardware like bullets, arrow tips, and mini fire axes. (Courtesy of BenShot)

A few years ago, Bruce and Ben Wolfgram started debating about how to design the ultimate shot glass. Pierced with a bullet, a combination of the father and son’s two favorite things—guns and drinking—the pun-fueled drinking vessel would basically defy gravity and challenge logic with its curved exterior and heat-embedded bits of artillery. Bruce Wolfgram, a retired artist who had years of experience in creative design, was up for the task. After a lot of research, and more than a few piles of shattered glass, BenShot was born.

“This was more or less a project to break my dad out of a retirement funk,” noted Ben Wolfgram, an engineer by trade who was working at a robotics company in Philadelphia when the concept was launched. “He toyed around with it in his garage; torching and molding the glass until he got it just right. He made a bunch and brought them to a local gun show. They immediately sold out.”

News of Wolfgram’s glassware spread rapidly via word of mouth, and Bruce spent much of his time traveling to gun shows throughout the country. As sales increased, the father-son duo decided to create a website and bring their products to a wider audience. Ben quit his job, moved back to his Appleton, Wisconsin, hometown, and, together with his father, opened a glass workshop on the grounds of a repurposed furniture factory formerly owned by Thomas Edison. The vintage workspace and rural Northwoods surroundings provided a unique glass-working environment.

(Courtesy of BenShot)

“It was our goal from the start to make everything here in the United States,” Ben Wolfgram said. “We wanted to create jobs in our hometown and source all of our raw materials from right here in this country. In five years, this business has grown from a one-man operation in a garage to a full-time staff of 40 employees working in a 50,000-square-foot production facility. Nothing is outsourced, and everything we use—even our cardboard packaging—is made right here in the U.S.A.”

Embedded with a real, lead-free, .308-caliber bullet, and handcrafted with glass furnaces and lots of heat, each two-ounce shot glass takes about seven hours to complete. Etched and personalized upon request, some of their best-selling varieties include tumblers emblazoned with the American flag or printed with the Second Amendment. The BenShot inventory also encompasses pints, rocks, and wine glasses, and there are decanters and beer mugs, too. Just this past year, the Wolfgrams extended their offerings, embedding their glasses with miniature fire axes, fishing lures, broadhead arrow tips, golf balls, and hockey pucks. Custom orders have included glass sets embedded with pinballs, guitar picks, and a variety of nuts and bolts.

(Courtesy of BenShot)

“We wanted to make other designs that would represent other people’s passions and professions,” Ben Wolfgram said. “Guys are hard to buy for, so we started brainstorming about different likes and pastimes. Golf was an easy one and made a good corporate gift. We started thinking about our first responders because one of our employees was enrolled in the fire academy.”

Sketching out a small fire ax in-house and modeling it in Computer-Aided Design software, the younger Wolfgram printed it in 3D and then made a mold to cast the ax out of molten pewter. “It’s become one of our bestsellers,” he said. “And the fact that it’s made here from start to finish—like all of our products are—is probably one of its most attractive features.”

BenShot’s sales have since skyrocketed. Their craftsmanship and customer service have propelled the brand into a multi-million-dollar sales range and forced a relocation to a more spacious factory. Still located in Appleton and selling the majority of their products on BenShot.com, the company also markets its wares on Amazon.

“We have a lot of engagement from small communities across the country,” Ben Wolfgram said. “Firefighters, police, and military make up the bulk of our buyers, but all of our customers appreciate the fact that the product is handmade right here in the U.S.”

And the company places great importance on giving back to the community that supports it. “We are honored to team up with like-minded nonprofit organizations,” he added. “To date, BenShot has donated to more than 300 nonprofit organizations throughout the United States. We care deeply about the military, law enforcement officers, first responders, and mental health causes.”

For Wolfgram, it’s an extension of his product’s top-tier standards. “Our success hinges on the quality of our products and whether our customers get everything they were promised,” he concluded. “Our philosophy is to make an innovative product while still keeping jobs here in the U.S. We enjoy what we do, and it’s our goal to share our enthusiasm and excellence with as many people as possible.”

Jessica Jones-Gorman launched her career in journalism at a New York City daily newspaper more than 20 years ago. She has worked a general news beat, covered fashion, and written countless features about people who inspire and lead.

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Features

Sticking to American Roots

Interior design featuring Ethan Allen furniture. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)

At a time in history when certain international governments are creating incentives for reshoring, the American company Ethan Allen can hold its head high because throughout its 89 years of operations, it never fell into the trap of offshoring the majority, or the totality, of its production for low-labor costs.

Contrary to what may have been common belief, remaining rooted in its home country did not hinder an innovative evolution or business growth. Instead, the choice to keep production in the United States seemed to strengthen the brand’s position in the market.

Within a matter of three years, the company went from initially selling gnomes, trellises, and garden swings produced by other companies to kickstarting its own production of colonial-style home furnishings. It fully established its style by rebranding, becoming officially known as Ethan Allen in 1969. Ethan Allen’s reputation flourished to the point where it opened its own storefronts and began selling directly to consumers.

Five years later, the company opened the Ethan Allen Hotel in Danbury, Connecticut. Since 1974, the hotel has received a number of awards and over 100 five-star ratings on the online forum Wedding Wire. In 2019, the hotel accepted two awards: The Knot’s Best of Weddings, for a second consecutive year; and the Couples’ Choice Award from Wedding Wire, for an eighth consecutive year.

Staying True

Throughout its rich history of constant innovation, the company transformed its colonial style into a modern-day classic style fitting for the ‘90s. Today, the company continues to reinvent its pieces in classic, country and coastal, and modern styles.

During the offshoring boom of the 2000s, Ethan Allen stayed home and invested in new technology and state-of-the-art equipment for its manufacturing facilities. Now, the company boasts of using less electricity, water, and other resources, as well as ways to reduce the amount of waste we, as consumers, put into landfills. Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation named Ethan Allen a Vermont Business Partner from 2013 to 2018. Ethan Allen also cleaned up pollution in the Connecticut River, which runs near one of its workshops dating back to the 1830s.

The company’s prospects were not always a ray of sunshine, though.

Since the recession, and following the plummet of U.S. manufacturer Furniture Brands International in 2013, a number of legacy American furniture brands got pulled into the wave of disaster. Ethan Allen struggled greatly to stay afloat. By 2019, however, the company had made a major comeback.

In fact, after discarding a short-lived, discount-drive methodology and returning to its original emphasis on in-house interior design services and the promise of best prices, the company has been on the rise.

A Go-To Brand

Now fully rekindled with interior design at the forefront, the company opened a new format design studio in The Westchester shopping center in White Plains, New York, in 2019. The studio integrates the latest technologies, such as a 3D room planner, to enhance the company’s complimentary interior design service.

Television host and lifestyle maven Parker Kelley (writer, producer,

Ethan Allen’s designs have a classic look. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)

and award-winning host of “Home, Life & Style,” a program that airs in New England) loved learning about Ethan Allen’s American heritage and tech tools during her recent partnership with the company to produce “Design Tips” segments on her show.

While the company’s constant innovation is good news for Ethan Allen’s in-house, world-class designers and consumers, the brand has been a long-lasting go-to for individual interior designers and the average American.

“Growing up, I’ve always known it to be a mainstay in the history of home furnishings. I’d love to see them last forever,” interior designer and home renovator Dina Dotsikas said in an interview for American Essence.

 

Ethan Allen has 1,000 in-house interior designers, but it openly suggests customers contact local interior designers and offers a useful site to guide clients. The team at Ethan Allen designs, develops—from cushions adjusted by hand for perfect shape and positioning, to upholstery in fabric or leather that is cut, sized and customized for a flawless fit—and delivers everything it makes.

Today, the company owns and operates nine manufacturing facilities, including six plants in the United States, two plants in Mexico, and one plant in Honduras.

Dotsikas said that “Ethan Allen has managed to shift with the times while maintaining the classic style appeal,” her personal preference. “Tradition will always be in style. We invest in more traditional pieces, the ones we know will last the longest; and we invest less in the more trendy, shorter-lived ones.”

“My personal style is classic, timeless, traditional with a touch of trend. I’ll stick with the basics that stand the test of time with a bit of today’s,” she added.

Dotsikas with her husband. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)

Dotsikas has known the Ethan Allen name since she was a child, considering it a brand that provides long-lasting furnishings you can pass down to future generations. It has been a go-to brand for decorating her own home.

“They have people that you can work with to make them more to your style. It’s not cookie-cutter. There are a million different options. That’s always a great feature,” she said.

Dotsikas often integrates pieces from Ethan Allen when she is “flipping homes”—by renovating homes that have been unloved, as she explained it. After seeing through the mess and reorganizing it for today’s families, ensuring form and function, she gets to the fun part of designing the interiors. She called it “staging.”

“It’s different when you’re staging the house instead of furnishing the house. You want them to walk in and see themselves sitting there. Having quality pieces and accessories are important because visitors can visualize themselves living in the homes. When in a bind, I’ll pull furniture from our own home to stage the flip homes.”

Since she has quite a few Ethan Allen pieces in her own home, she uses them to stage homes set for sale—to give them that high-quality, luxury aesthetic she desires.

Erin Tallman is the editor-in-chief of ArchiExpo e-Magazine, an online news source for architecture and design professionals. She is based in Marseille, France, and enjoys cycling around Europe as a way to soak up the culture, discovering hotel gems along the way.

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Entrepreneurs Features

Cast in Stone, That Is, Iron

John Truex and Liz Seru converted an old turbine blade factory in Upstate New York into a cast iron foundry. (Photo Courtesy of Borough Furnace)

For a growing number of American households, Teflon-coated pans, copper pots, or anything else for that matter other than a handcrafted cast iron skillet, would be, well, an outcast in the kitchen.

Crazy as it seems, the people who make this heavily weighted and highly popular custom-made cookware are willing to face furnaces burning at 2300 degrees Fahrenheit on a hot summer’s day, inside an old mill building they bought with their life savings, just to put one in your kitchen.

“It can be a little miserable at times,” said Liz Seru, who owns Borough Furnace with her husband, John Truex. About 10 years ago, they converted an old turbine blade factory in Upstate New York into a foundry to pursue their love for cast iron cookware. At the start, Seru, an artist, and Truex, who holds a degree in metal casting, bought vegetable oil off Craigslist to run their blast furnace, before switching to an electric induction oven.

And they’re not alone. Cast iron foundries, once as American as blue jeans and apple pie, have resurfaced all over the United States.

Aficionados say the taste of food cooked on the same cast iron pan gets better with time.

The Cast Iron Collector, a website dedicated to cast-iron-cooking enthusiasts, lists more than 300 cast iron foundries in the country, with a heavy concentration in the Midwest and down south where Lodge, the oldest maker of cast iron cookware in the United States, hosts popular cook-offs and a national cornbread festival in celebration of cast-iron cooking.

What’s driving this trendy revival in cookware all boils down to the simplicities of a highly sought-after taste, unparalleled durability, and old-fashioned made-in-America craftsmanship. Some foodies have quite literally lost their taste for modern lightweight stick-free cookware, which, besides, being short-lived, doesn’t quite offer the same flavorful results of cast iron.

Like a fine wine, the taste of food cooked on the same cast iron pan gets better with time. It’s called seasoning, a somewhat scientific phenomenon that naturally improves the surface of your skillet as you use your skillet more and more.

“Basically, the fat and oils in the food adhere to the pan and polymerize to form a new, smoother cook surface,” Seru said. “It’s better than when it was brand new.”

Forged cast iron cookware is also made out of hot iron poured into a mold and then cooled, meaning it’s all crafted in one piece, with no separate handles or bottoms that may eventually come apart.

Borough Furnace’s cookware is crafted in one piece, with no separate handles or bottoms. (Courtesy of Borough Furnace)

In addition to skillets, cast iron foundries like Golden’s Cast Iron in Columbus, Georgia, have revived an authentic cast iron cauldron-like cooker—yep, the kind that brings to mind a steamy, bubbling witch’s brew.

Cast iron skillets are also popular among campers who want a little more than hot dogs and beans over an open fire. A skillet made by Finex, an Oregon-based foundry that prides itself on being “100 percent American-made,” appears on multiple published lists for must-have camping gear.

“We make our cast iron a little bit thicker than most,” said Michael Griffin, Finex’s brand director. “When you cook over a grill and open fire, you’re going to have hot and cool spots. That thicker cast iron helps even out the cold and hot spots.”

Finex’s other big attraction is its patented stainless steel spiral handles that stay cool longer and cool down faster. Even in the old days, cast iron skillets didn’t have such a feature. Griffin said the company got the idea from old-fashioned wood stoves that had similar handles on their doors.

“We wanted to reinvent the cast iron skillet,” said Griffin. ” It’s a very classic, time-honored American piece of cookware, but it hadn’t changed in design for a couple of hundred years.”

Cast iron cookware is now even topping wedding registries over coffee machines and vacuum cleaners.

(Courtesy of Borough Furnace)

The revival of the beefy, indestructible kitchenware is so trendy that it has inspired blogs with such titles as “Why I’m Replacing My Skillets With Cast Iron” and articles on how to spot an authentic vintage cast iron skillet at a roadside antique shop.

Wagner and Griswold cookware are like the Ming Dynasty vases of antique cast iron skillets. One piece can fetch up to $1,500. An authentic “spider skillet” originally designed by Paul Revere and made up until the 1890s can be worth up to $8,000.

There are, of course, varying tiers of cast iron skillets, depending on the level of hands-on craftsmanship. Borough Furnace is probably one of the most handcrafted foundries in the country: they do only about 15 iron pours per day.

The Finger Lakes-based company is working to catch up on orders for its 10.5-inch frying skillet, which sells for $300. The company also custom-forges porcelain-enameled dutch ovens and something called cazuelas, ramekin-like cookware made out of recycled cast iron—part of Seru and Truex’s ironclad commitment to keeping their foundry as environmentally friendly as possible. They are even voluntarily carbon emissions-certified.

“We do our best to reduce our footprint,” said Seru. “We want to preserve American tradition as much as America itself.”

Alice Giordano is a former news correspondent for The Boston Globe, Associated Press, and New England bureau of The New York Times. Alice loves to cook her vegetarian cuisine on the vintage cast iron skillet she inherited from her mom.

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Camping The Great Outdoors

Enjoy the Great Outdoors With These Made-in-America Products

(Courtesy of ULA Equipment)

Finex Skillet, $120–$240

(Courtesy of Finex)

FinexUSA.com
Based in Portland, Oregon, Finex crafts cast-iron cookware by hand. Their pans have a unique octagonal shape that allows for easy pouring of liquids and releasing of whole-pan dishes such as cornbread, while each handle has a stainless steel spring that helps keep it cool enough to touch. The Finex skillet is perfect to bring on a camping trip to do all the cooking.

Gokey Boots, $299–$599

(Courtesy of Gokey)

GokeyUSA.com
These are your classic outdoorsmen’s boots, primarily made from handsome Brazil pebble grain leather that’s tanned in the United States. Gokey is a 171-year-old company that continues to handcraft its shoes to this day, out of a factory in Columbia, Mississippi. The leather retains 18 percent of its original oil content, making it soft, flexible, and more water-repellent.

Flint and Tinder Waxed Trucker Jacket, $240

(Courtesy of Huckberry)

Huckberry.com
A sturdy jacket can be a necessity as you brave the elements outdoors. This one is made of water-resistant sailcloth that will reveal natural wear patterns as the fabric creases and bends. The sailcloth is sourced in New Jersey, while the jacket is made in Los Angeles.

Middleton Made Knives’ ONA Knife, $360

(Courtesy of Middleton Made Knives)

MiddletonMadeKnives.com
Artisan knife-maker and South Carolinian Quintin Middleton has created a new culinary folding knife, dubbed ONA (a Yoruba term for fire), designed to be tough yet lightweight and suitable for a variety of uses, from working in the kitchen to hunting and fishing outdoors. The blade is made of stainless steel and the handle is made of anodized titanium.

Middleton became curious about knife-making after watching “Conan the Barbarian”; he took down his mother’s shower rod and beat it into a knife handle. As a teenager, he met bladesmith Jason Knight and began training under him. Today, Middleton is known for making knives for Charleston’s top chefs.

ULA Equipment Backpacks, $160–$299

(Courtesy of ULA Equipment)

ULA-Equipment.com
ULA Equipment makes backpacks that are lightweight, yet durable enough to get the job done. The company’s popular Catalyst model can hold up to 40 pounds and has comfortable features including an internal frame, a padded hip belt, and contoured shoulder straps—it’s even bear-canister capable. Their bags are all sewn and made in Logan, Utah.