Buy American

With Independence Day just around the corner, it’s an appropriate time to remind everyone to Buy American.  It is important to the nation’s economy and it’s particularly important to small businesses.  Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, interact with other small businesses and cross-promote when possible: each one helping one.  They are a fine example of the generosity that America possesses.  Here’s a personal example.  Casart recently selected Homebody DC  as the location for a photo shoot.  The staging was done by stylist Samina Vieth and the photographer was Yulia Mikhalchuk.   All are members of the DC design community.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms and employ just over half of all private sector employees. Small business have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the last 15 years and pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll… As a nation, we must support this. Recent reports indicate that if each American spent a dollar a day onU.S.made goods this alone would create almost 1 Million new jobs in a year.  When you go shopping for your daily groceries, clothing or home improvement tools, start locally, buy American and keep our jobs here. Even if it costs a couple extra dollars, supporting small businesses is the only way we can get our nation up and running again.

MISSION: SMALL BUSINESS

Casart coverings is currently participating in the Chase/Living Social national initiative to help small businesses.  Small businesses can submit their application to be considered to be one of 12 recipients of a $250,000 grant.  To be eligible for consideration, the business must first receive 250 votes via Facebook by June 30^th.  We would certainly appreciate your support ofAlexandria based Casart coverings in our effort to get those 250 votes.  If you don’t have a Facebook account, please tell your friends about it, ask them to vote and tell their friends.  We’ve set our goal at 15 votes a day and we are encouraged that we will reach the 250 votes with the support of other businesses, friends and family.  Here’s what you do:

Click Mission: Small Business.  Go to Support on the right side. Login with your Facebook account. Search for Casart in the businesses (no city or state needed). Click vote and please share with your friends.

MADE IN AMERICA

Last year ABC News did a special about products that are made in America and how just increasing what we buy by 1- 2% can boost our economy.

The series took a family’s home and removed all the products that were not made in America. Surprisingly, this was the majority of what they owned. The challenge was to replace everything with items made inAmerica. The ABC team found most of the items here in the USA but they were hard to come by and had to be searched to be found. The only thing they couldn’t locate was a coffee maker. The family had to live without this. I don’t know if I could.

There are numerous web sites that list American made items and each week the Travel Channel visits a different city and features  American made products.

WHY BUY AMERICAN?

Americans Working lists these top  reasons why it’s important to buy American made products.

1. Jobs – Above all else, when you buy American you save or create AMERICAN JOBS! These are the jobs that are at the foundation of our economy, and have unfortunately been moving overseas, but by buying American you can help to reverse that trend.

2. Environmental – Many of the top countries where our goods come from have little or no regulations to protect
the environment, and the manufacturers have no regard for the earth and they pollute and abuse the soil, air, and the water. When you buy American you know there are regulations in place to protect the environment so our children can appreciate this beautiful country as much as we do.

3. Human Rights – The countries the United States import from often have nonexistent standards regular working conditions. Many of the factories producing US bound goods are worse than our prisons, and filled with children working extremely long days. No one wants to support that, and by buying American you know you aren’t we have regulations and agencies in this country to prevent those types of atrocities.

4. Democracy – Americans believe in and stand up for democracy whenever we can, and by choosing to buy American you are supporting the ideals of democracy.

5. Conservation – When buying products that are produced overseas built into the price is the cost of shipping that product all the way from that country to the United States, usually crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. This wastes an extremely large amount of petroleum and produces unnecessary emissions into the atmosphere.

6. Domino Effect – When you buy American that money stays in the United States. That money goes to pay the wage of many people that are directly or indirectly responsible for creating your product. Each of them in turn spends this money on goods (hopefully American made) and services, and the cycle continues. The more you buy American, the more the economy is stimulated, and the more jobs are created.  Plus, American workers pay taxes on wages earned in America.

7. MORE JOBS – For every manufacturing job there are FIVE additional jobs created. Do the math. Dollar for dollar it is a great investment in this amazing country!

It’s nice to know if my walls were bare and I wanted to decorate them that all phases of  Casart’s production are made in America, from the substrate’s manufacturing, the PSA(pressure sensitive adhesive, which is water-based), to the artistic creation and printing as well as the shipping. We’re doing our part to keep this economy going. These All-American, artistic stair risers can be found on our Architectural page.

Here are just some of the Patriotic Casart Design which along with all our wall coverings are Made in America!

We are proud to be        

Ashley Spencer & Casart Coverings Crew

 

Feature Image Photo courtesy of Patrick Hoesly