We at Hempy’s feel very strongly about doing everything possible…
to build thriving LOCAL economies. This concept is not driven by any sort of tribalism, or nationalism. The idea of making goods close to home does not even come from a particular philosophy of “saving American jobs” – at least not in the way it is typically promoted. We do not come from a stance of separation. Of some arbitrary “us vs them” mentality where who is the ‘us’ and who is the ’them’ is established by completely arbitrary and ever shifting borders.No, we come at “Made in the USA” as more of a short hand for “Made as close to home as possible” philosophy. After all, the USA is a very large geographic area encompassing a large number of unique and diverse families, cultures, neighborhoods, cities, and states.
The growing “global economy” has been heralded as a wonderful thing that will advance the good of all humans all over the planet. We here at HEMPY’S do not ascribe to this theory.
On the contrary, we believe that the closer to home we can produce our goods and use the craftsman etc., the more all people AND the planet will naturally thrive. When our craftswomen and men are in our neighborhood, it allows us to know them personally, we know their families,we help one another out in times of crisis and we celebrate with them when their kids get married.
It allows us to visit our production facilities often, we know the best practices of the waste handling, we can discuss the need for more space, or different working conditions and the thousands of small incremental decisions that add up to a quality of life, or lack thereof. To be manufacturing across an ocean immediately disallows all of the foregoing.
We believe in local economies. To the greatest extent possible we strive to support each other on a community level. Huge centralized anything is NEVER preferable to small localized. Large, cheap, factory farms, or manufacturing facilities fly in the face of everything HEMPY’S is about: quality of life, quality of goods, the environment etc. Besides building an environment where those around you can thrive, staying local keeps the carbon footprint to an absolute minimum. We do not think it is responsible to be shipping goods back and forth to and from far away places just to save a few cents.
Factory farms, mega factories of any kind seem to inevitably lead to greed through an obsession with cutting the cost of goods sold at almost any expense. Giant monocultures lack diversity of all kinds, in fact, they actually seek to eliminate diversity completely. Thus they are extremely vulnerable to sickness and complete collapse. It leads to weakness, not strength.
This happens in corporations, factory farms and in the sewing factories. This globalization has led to a culture where quality of goods, quality of life, a fair trade for a day’s labor is quickly lost. Where larger is better to cut costs and what is lost is that this mythical “savings” is really just compression on the backs of human workers and the planet itself.
Way beyond making things in the USA, we try to make things in our city. If not our city, then our state. And finally if there are no functioning knitting mills in California, then we will go one state over to find the closest possible source for what we need. Keeping the carbon footprint as minimal as possible.
Furthermore, we do not depend on the U.S. legal system to set standards in any area. We do not believe that we can depend on U.S laws to set the standard of care for each other and the planet that we want to maintain, but at least it is a very bare minimum standard set from which we can build a new business model. Building a whole new model is easier to do in our own backyard than it would be to try and do across the ocean.
Local economies thrive on diversity , global economies tend to become very homogenous, and watered down to the lowest possible quality, and health. There seems to be a fairly direct correlation between size and centralization and the amount of abuse and greed and lack of quality.
It is HEMPY’S belief that the closer to home, the more you know about the people and the operations of where you get our foods and goods the more it leads to higher QUALITY. This is quality of all kinds on all levels for all of the stakeholders. “Made in the USA is really a very easy short hand way of saying on a 1 in. x 1 in. label all of the above.
For more on this concept see TRUE COST documentary http://truecostmovie.com/