Monday, August 18, 2008

Gateway to the American Made Marketplace©

Our professional logo is in place & the code for our link banner was written, but we're excited most about the new search feature on our site which we've dubbed - Gateway to the American Made Marketplace©

Unlike your local retail store where the rare find is a US made item, we’d like to introduce you to the reverse situation.

Behind a simple search interface, we carefully assembled a vast collection of the prime Internet locations with 100% or virtually 100% Made in the USA products.*

The locations we search include the online malls, state malls, manufacturers’ sites and selected merchants whose inventory is exclusively Made in the USA. All of these different locations can now be simultaneously searched in one place.

Relieved of the clutter from imports, we view this search as the simplest, quickest & most efficient means to match a US made product with a shopper who seeks such a product.

Nearly all locations in our search have a shopping cart, so a shopper can promptly locate & purchase US made goods if they wish. Since the balance of the inventory is US made on the sites in our search, the discerning consumer can continue to browse or shop for other US made goods.

About Our Search:

All sites and their inventory were carefully researched & vetted prior to inclusion in our search.

*We held to this rule while developing this search. If a location had only 1 identified imported product while the balance of the inventory was Made in the USA, they were acceptable. If they had more than 1 imported item or if it was not identified as such, the location was excluded. This is how we achieved such a pure concentration of Made in the USA products and it explains the 8 isolated imports in our vast search - imports which are identified as such in the product descriptions.

While we have no control over the inventory offered by the sites in our search, we do have control over whether or not a location remains. If we become aware of an increase in the number of imported products offered on a site in our search, it will be eliminated from the search. Likewise, as we find additional suitable locations with 100% US made products, they will be included.

A few of the sites in our search note product origin only on their Home, About Us or FAQ pages so you may not see the origin in some product descriptions. We've checked but since inventory can change, you may wish to verify the origin yourself prior to any purchase.

In some cases, a site's technology was somehow incompatible with our search and so unfortunately, they were not included. In the future, we hope to correct that situation, if possible. Locations that were not included in our search are marked with a red asterisk in our departments. We suggest browsing our departments in addition to the search for additional locations for US made goods.

Search Tips

Results from a query are based primarily on relevance and they can range from No Results to numerous pages dependant upon the search query. (No location appears in our search due to any type of compensation.) They are present because the goods they offer are exclusively US made.

When using the Gateway to the American Made Marketplace©, it can be helpful to use both less specific and more specific search terms. By simply searching the two words shower and curtain, results will deliver both shower curtains and shower curtain rings. Rather than simply searching for stuffed animals, a specific animal can be searched such as a stuffed giraffe.

Sizes can be searched successfully such as Plus Size or Big & Tall. Brands and companies can also be searched.

Results can differ when using or not using quotation marks or from singular and plural versions of words. You might like to try your searches with and without quotations and in a singular and plural form. Terminology can achieve different results such as searching the word overalls or coveralls.

Presently, the search represents about 50% of the compatible sites from our departments. It is already possible to search and locate a surprising quantity and variety of goods, all Made in the USA. We'll continue to contribute and enlarge the search over the next few months. We're noting our progress for users in the left column of our search page.

Please take a few minutes and give our search a test drive. We'd be delighted to hear from you about our site or our search. Please send any comments or feedback to mary@findusmade.com

Mary - web person for Find US Made.com