Q: What put Devium on this quest for 100% American Made?
A: It’s not a particularly pretty founding story (and our longtime customers have already heard it) but it’s the real one. The year before we founded Devium (Flag Day: June 14, 2015), we had spent the prior year designing snowboard outerwear with our development and supply chain wholly in China. (Yes, that China. Where they still torture dissidents and disappear political rivals.) Working with China was a lot less expensive.
But we felt dead inside.
So in the end we had a group moral reckoning where we chose to abandon that business model, cancel the contracts, pay our offshore suppliers what was owed to date, and start again from scratch. It was painful. And the exact right thing to do.
Q: What does 100% American Made mean to Devium?
A: In a perfect world 100% American Made means our styles are conceived, designed, patterned, prototyped, milled, dyed, pre-washed and shrunk, cut, buttoned, zippered, labeled, hand sewn, embroidered, and finished in the USA.
Our mission is to help rebuild the Made in the USA apparel ecosystem by crafting small batch original styles that are created of 100% American made fabrics and trims, and also are sewn and finished in the USA.
Particularly we’re on a mission to support the smaller (and most frequently multigenerational family-owned) businesses that have survived the changes over the past decades – and have never wavered from their Made in USA roots. Additionally, we proactively support newly created small businesses by encouraging them to take the plunge and offer more Made in USA apparel materials– and then buying USA components from them even as they’re in the start-up phase.
Q: How close is Devium to hitting its 100% American Made goal?
A: We’re proud to say that we’re about 95% of the way there! Throughout the years (dang, how time flies) we’ve become quite good at sourcing Made in the USA materials (both vintage and new finds) from partners – from the larger ones to the practically microscopic ones.
Some of them are easy to find (think small to midsize companies with websites) while many of them continue to be needle-in-a-haystack finds. (Think of the oldtimer entrepreneur with solely a phone number listed in a decade old list 14 pages down into a Google search – or the friend of a friend of a friend who still insists on doing business The Old Fashioned Way.) We’re pretty proud of these hard found partnerships and continue to nurture them.
Want to know more? Stay tuned as we further explore the nuts and bolts (and trials and tribulations) of our 100% American Made vision.