Have you ever wondered where your stuff comes from? At DECKED, you don’t have to wonder. It comes from Defiance, Ohio (Drawer Systems, Tool Box and D-co Cases) or St. George, Utah (CargoGlide). We also know who made it — because we employ our own staff of badass American manufacturing workers.
Impressive, we know. But some might ask: “So what? Why does American-made matter, anyway?”
Grab a slice of apple pie, and let’s dig in.
1. MORE AMERICAN JOBS.
Pretty simple, right? If you hire an American to build something in the USA instead of contracting it out to workers overseas, you create an American job.
In our case, we’ve created over 100 jobs — just in manufacturing — at our facilities Utah and Ohio. Plus another hundred or so engineers, sales people, and various desk jockeys required to make this operation run.
2. INVESTMENT IN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
You don’t have to be an economist to understand this one. We’ve invested millions of dollars into state-of-the art manufacturing facilities in Ohio and Utah. We hire badass manufacturing workers, and even attract some to the area. Those people spend those dollars in those communities. And those dollars go on to fund other businesses and support other employees in the area.
It all builds upon itself and creates better places to live. And a better place to raise the next generation of Americans. Americans who might just come up with the next great American invention after truck drawers.
3. HIGHER STANDARDS
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. This applies to cheap products made overseas, too. Prices are driven down through various means of corner-cutting — namely low worker pay, low safety standards, poor working conditions, low-quality raw materials, and mass production of cookie cutter products that are re-badged for 20 different brands.
No thanks.
Here at DECKED, we maintain exceptionally high standards for both our workers and our products. We’re ISO 9001:2015 certified, which means you can trust our products, our facilities, and our safety standards. Our safety record is strong, and we keep improving every day to keep our employees safe. We were even ranked the best place to work in Defiance County, Ohio once.
4. DEDICATED WORKERS. DEDICATED FACILITIES.
No disrespect to the hard-working manufacturers around the world, but our workers have a big advantage when it comes to making DECKED products: They spend every day doing it. They’re focused on DECKED. They’re employed by DECKED. And they care about what they make. Even if we make mistakes, that just means we get better and stronger as a result.
Same story for our dedicated manufacturing facilities. We can check on our products and make running changes anytime we want (and do so regularly). No need to wait for a container full of products to make its voyage across the ocean. In fact, we even offer a monthly $1,000 prize to employees for identifying dumb things we do in our processes. Then we fix them and keep improving. You won’t get this from some overseas manufacturing, no matter how good (or bad) the workers and facilities might be.
5. BETTER PRODUCTS
What do you get when you combine better workers with higher standards and dedicated facilities? You guessed it — better products.
Better as in less likely to fail, built to last longer, tested more rigorously, better engineered to begin with, and made with care by people who really understand their job. This is what allows us to offer a lifetime No BS Warranty on everything we sell.
We also build DECKED products from higher-quality materials. For example, the recycled High Density Polyethylene we use in our Drawer Systems, which is stronger, lighter, and creates less waste than other alternatives. In fact, everything we do is designed to last a lifetime, so there’s one fewer piece of useless, broken junk in the world.
So, yeah, we could probably figure out a way to cut corners, ship manufacturing overseas, and save a couple bucks. But we’d rather support American workers, invest in American communities, and make products that you can use for a very long time. So get DECKED. Get American-made. And get after it.
