Shoes are an important accessory of our daily life. Without them, we cannot even think of traversing the face of mother Earth. Their popularity is further increased by the designs in which they are molded or the exclusivity of the leather material that is used to make it, both of which matter to an average American buyer.
With the advent of globalization and the tendency of different firms to outsource work, manufacturing of shoes and other types of footwear have been off-shored to third-world (read as developing) countries. The availability of cheap labor in such markets has substantiality reduced the production costs for American firms and also increased their profits.
However, the decline in the number of US jobs that such an out-sourcing has led to has had put in front of the US lawmakers a unique situation. With cut in number of jobs and no chance of increasing them in the present business model, the number of jobless individuals has shot up rapidly. This means that they will have to find alternate means to earn their livelihood, to pay their grocery bills, phone bills, and most importantly to pay back their pending loans.
Keeping these things in mind, a recent move has been launched to promote the consumption of goods and services made in America. And it is the American shoes and footwear industry which is witnessing some major pushes in this direction. Aimed at a nation-wide level, this movement intends to popularize the use of American shoes and other type of footwear by highlighting the cause of fellow American citizens who lost their manufacturing jobs to outsourcing.
People have responded enthusiastically to such a move. And that includes not only end customers, but also manufacturers. Well, willing to lose out on the substantial cuts in production costs that outsourcing offered them, they have decided to bring their manufacturing business back to the United State's soil. Two names worth mentioning here are Danner Shoe Company and Cape Shoe Company.
Both these shoe manufacturing companies have relocated their manufacturing units back to United States. While Cape Shoe Company has restarted production at its Cape Girardeau, Missouri factory, Danner had resisted the urge to cave into the lucrative outsourcing business to continue production at its Portland, Oregon facility (where it has continued production without interruption since 1936).
These are two success stories that have to repeatedly manifold times, if the number of people without jobs has to be minimized. At the same time, American consumers would need to become more aware of the benefits of consuming American products. If they insist on buying that which is American, they can definitely help in minimizing the number of those people without jobs.
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