Made In America, Mostly: How to spot fake heritage

Last month, my wife and I spent an afternoon walking around the West Village in New York. As we ambled between the boutiques and fashion houses, we passed a Buck Mason store. My wife pointed it out and said “Oh, I think you’d really like them. They make all their stuff. It’s all American-made.”

I was immediately skeptical. My instinct is that brands who focus on making things in America spend their money on making them, rather than on West Village rents. So I looked them up.

As it turns out, Buck Mason does make things in the USA. It owns a sewing factory in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, that makes some of its T-shirts from fabric knitted at its mill in neighboring Shillington. Some of its jeans are also cut and sewn in Los Angeles. They promote their “Made in USA” line in the top menu of their website, and the page leads with the mill’s story.

Buck Mason bought both facilities in December 2022, after Stitch Fix closed them and cut 56 jobs. The company then rehired several of the original workers. When the New York Times reported on the mill in August 2023, 20 people worked at the two sites. “It’s not a lot of jobs,” Mohnton’s mayor, Eric Burgis, told the paper. Co-founder Erik Allen Ford said “the dream” was to employ 100. His co-founder, Sasha Koehn, said being able to market products as “made in America” was one benefit of making them here, along with quality control.

I could find no public headcount for the mill since then. Buck Mason now has 44 stores, two of them on Bleecker Street in the West Village.

Curious about the scale of the USA-made component of their business, I audited the origin line on every product page in Buck Mason’s men’s and women’s catalog. There were 773 listings in all. Of those, 83 were made in the US, about 1 in 9. 385 listings carry the word “Import” without naming a country and 17 named Japan or England. The remaining 288 listings said nothing about where they were made.

To be fair to Buck Mason, many of its US-made items do carry a “Made in USA” tag on the product grid. Its US-made tees are also often cheaper than its imported ones. The Pima tee, made in the US, costs $48, while the imported Field-Spec heavy tee costs $62. Its Our Story page says its partnerships are “both domestic and overseas.”

Buck Mason is a fashion brand selling a mid-century American look. It does not shy away from applying “American Heritage” language and iconography in its marketing. But at least it operates a mill, employing some American workers. It is by no means the worst case. As I kept digging, I found some real shockers.

Roughly 97% of the apparel and footwear sold in America is imported. Buying imported is a perfectly reasonable choice for many people, and many imported products are high quality.

However, some heritage brands market the notion of “American-made” across the whole brand, while importing most of what they sell.

Shinola calls itself “The American Watchmaker.” On 92% of its product pages, I found no indication of where the product was made. Every leather and jewelry page I checked carries a paragraph about its Detroit watch factory, with no confirmation that the products were actually produced there.

Filson leads its homepage with the slogan “Unfailing Goods Since 1897.” They charge $149 for an imported 8-ounce flannel shirt. Carhartt sells an imported 8-ounce flannel shirt, labeled as such, for $55.

I suspect many people are happy to pay a heritage price if they know it supports American manufacturing. I certainly am. Some brands charge that price and sell you the appearance of heritage.

Today’s article covers what the law says about “Made in USA,” and names a few of the worst cases. I’ll run the numbers on what the heritage premium costs you, and share how to find real, high-quality American-made goods.

The FTC sets the standard for origin claims. Under its guidance, any product sold as “Made in USA” must be “all or virtually all” made in the country. Its final assembly must happen in the US, and it should contain no more than a negligible amount of foreign content.

The rules cover more than simply saying “Made in USA.” The FTC judges “the overall impression” that an ad conveys. It says US flags, maps and “references to U.S. locations of headquarters or factories” can all imply that a product is made here. An American brand name on its own does not. The guidance does not mention whether founding dates or heritage copy imply US origin.

“Assembled in USA” is a lesser claim. It requires that the product’s principal assembly happen in the US, and that assembly must be substantial. The FTC’s Made in USA rule also treats “built” in the USA as the same claim as “made” in the USA.

The FTC also sets out additional standards for clothing. Under the textile rule, a listing that sells clothing online or by mail must say clearly and conspicuously whether each item was made in the USA, imported, or both. Every imported garment must also name its country on the label.

The FTC does enforce these rules. It sent four Made in USA warning letters in July 2025 (to flagpole retailer Americana Liberty, footwear maker Oak Street Manufacturing, LLC, football equipment company Pro Sports Group LLC, and personal care products manufacturer USA Big Mountain Paper Inc). In April of this year, it announced a sweep that included three law enforcement actions.

The average American wardrobe is now predominantly made up of imported goods. Despite that, the provenance of clothing still matters to many buyers. In a 2025 Gallup poll, 43% of Americans said it was important that their clothing and shoes were made in the US. Among people who said that origin matters, 71% cited supporting American jobs and workers when asked why, the most common reason. Only 39% said that they usually know where a product was made before they buy it.

Most buyers are not prepared to pay extra, though. In a 2017 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 37% said they would not pay any more for US-made goods, and another 47% would pay at most 10% more. Bear in mind that this poll is now almost a decade old. I’d be interested to learn whether those numbers have shifted at all.

Affordable clothing is a fair thing to want, and an imported jacket can certainly be an excellent jacket. Imports serve a genuine need, and the fact that consumers now have access to excellent clothing at more affordable prices is something I have no qualms with. I want to focus instead on the companies that market American heritage across the whole brand while importing most of what they sell. They charge heritage prices for the imports too. Shinola, Filson and Woolrich are a few examples in this group.

To assess the level of disconnect between the brands’ manufacturing practices and their marketing claims, I compared what each brand’s homepage says with what its product pages say about where things are made. Counts are between the 31st of October and the 3rd of November.

Shinola takes its name from a shoe polish brand founded in Rochester, New York, in 1907, which went out of business in 1960. In 2011, Bedrock Manufacturing, the Dallas company owned by Fossil founder Tom Kartsotis, bought the rights to the name and launched the new Shinola in Detroit.

It assembles quartz watch movements in its Detroit factory “from Swiss and imported parts,” and it sews some of its leather straps there. Its homepage title reads “The American Watchmaker … Shinola began with a simple idea: to bring watchmaking back to the US.” Its About page headline reads “Designed and Built in Detroit.” The same page says it works with “hand-selected manufacturers in America and abroad.”

I audited all 558 product pages on Shinola’s site. Of those, 514 (92%) provide no indication of where the product was made. That includes every leather good and every piece of jewelry, along with 120 of the 153 watches.

Every one of the 31 leather and jewelry pages I checked carries the same copy about the watch factory:

This $225 wallet is a typical example. Its page contains no origin disclosure. It does, however, carry the factory paragraph, under the heading “Reviving American Craft, One Watch at a Time.” The same section also says, “American manufacturing is thriving once again in Detroit.”

The FTC has looked into Shinola’s marketing claims before. In 2016, FTC staff closed an inquiry after the company agreed to drop the slogan “Where American is Made” and qualify its other claims. The letter found that 100% of the materials cost of certain Shinola watches was imported.

A Shinola employee who recently left the company told me they joined because of that promise. They wrote, “I joined this company on the basis that we were bringing jobs back to the area.” On a call, they added: “I thought we were making watches in Detroit.” Inside, they said, the company was “always kind of vague with us about what was going on.”

Their account of what actually gets built in the Detroit factory is narrower than the marketing. The factory assembles watches and stitches straps, they wrote, “but that’s it.” They estimated that “up to 99% of components in the watches were foreign-made.”

According to the employee, Shinola’s clocks are the starkest example. “They have clocks that actually say when you open the box up, made in China.” Shinola’s product pages say its 14-inch wall clocks are “built in the United States with U.S. and imported parts,” and that its 6-inch desk clocks are “assembled in our Detroit watch factory.” 13 of the company’s 14 clocks carry product codes ending in “CHN,” the standard code for China.

Leather goods follow the same pattern. The employee said nearly every leather item in Shinola’s stores carries a tag reading “Made in Vietnam.” On its website, 211 of its 238 leather product codes end in “VNM,” the standard code for Vietnam, including the $225 wallet.

Customers asked the employee more than once why the watches cost so much. “There is no good answer.”

Filson was founded in Seattle in 1897 as an outfitter for prospectors heading to the Klondike gold rush. The Filson family sold the company in 1970. It changed hands twice more before Bedrock bought it from private equity firm Brentwood Associates in 2012. Filson and Shinola share an owner, and the FTC’s 2016 letter covered Filson-branded products as well.

It still makes its Mackinaw Cruiser jacket as well as its Mackinaw and Western vests at its own factory in Kent, south of Seattle. As recently as 2015, it made 90% of its products in the US. In 2023, the Seattle Times reported that it moved up to two-thirds of its remaining Seattle-area production to a vendor in southern California.

The move cut up to 26 manufacturing jobs, mainly in Kent. Bedrock’s then-CEO, Awenate Cobbina, said the move was about management time and “was not a cost-driven exercise.” Filson declined to tell the paper what share of its products are still made in the US.

As of November 1st, 157 of 1,096 listings on Filson’s site sit in its Made in USA collection. Many are small goods such as hats, belts and home items, and some are made with imported materials. Just 14 listings carry the “Made at Filson” tag.

When I checked a random sample of 36 men’s listings, 31 read “Imported.” The homepage still leads with “Unfailing Goods Since 1897” and “The Original Outfitter since 1897.”

Woolrich runs the slogan “American Heritage Since 1830” as its homepage title. Its heritage page tells the story of its Pennsylvania woolen mill. That mill has not been operational since 2018.

At its peak in 1988, the company employed about 3,000 people, and it ran 10 US plants by 1989. By 1995, it had closed six of them and moved much of its sewing to Mexico. A 2016 merger with its Italian licensee ended nearly two centuries of Rich family majority ownership, and in 2018, the Luxembourgish private equity firm L-GAM bought a majority stake.

By then, Woolrich employed about 250 people worldwide. The original mill described on the company’s heritage page stopped making fabric at the end of 2018, and its equipment was auctioned off in 2023.

Every Woolrich product page I checked names the country it was made in, such as India or Vietnam. Its homepage title still leads with “American Heritage Since 1830,” and the heritage page offers no indication that the mill it describes has since shut down.

Heritage brands charge heritage prices, whether or not a good is imported. Filson’s Alaskan Guide Shirt is made of 8-ounce cotton flannel. Its page reads “Manufacturing: Imported.” Filson’s European site says it is made in Sri Lanka. It costs $149.

Carhartt’s Hubbard Loose LS Plaid Shirt is made of “8-ounce, 100% cotton brushed flannel.” Its page reads “Country of Origin: Imported.” Carhartt’s flannel can be had for $54.99 to $59.99.

The Filson shirt costs almost three times as much as the Carhartt. Both are constructed from 8-ounce flannel, and both are made abroad.

Other heritage brands charge more still. Woolrich’s cotton flannel shirt is made in India and costs $195. Pendleton’s wool board shirt costs $198 and reads “Assembled in Mexico of USA made fabric.” It’s a different cloth and the product page is clear about where each part is made.

I have not tested any of these shirts directly, and the Filson does have some extra features relative to the Carhartt. Its flannel is a twill brushed on both sides, and its chest pockets are gusseted, so they expand. It also comes with Filson’s limited lifetime guarantee. The Carhartt also has extras of its own, such as triple-stitched main seams. Both shirts share the same weight of cotton flannel and a pleated back. Details like these probably account for some of the $94 difference, but not all of it. A large part is the premium that a heritage name can command.

Honest labeling means the product page tells the same story as the homepage. If a product is made here, the page says so. If it is imported, the page says that too.

Red Wing’s Heritage line gets the first half right. Its Heritage homepage says the boots are “Handcrafted … in our Minnesota factory,” and all 90 Heritage styles back that up. Each US-made tile carries a flag, and each product page shows “Made in USA” under the main photo. Its filter separates “Made in USA” from “Made in USA with Imported Parts,” and its Porter Moc reads “MADE IN USA W/ IMPORTED PARTS.”

Red Wing’s work boots are less clear. Of 296 styles in its men’s work section, 61 carry a US origin label. The other 235 say only “Globally Sourced,” without naming a country. That includes its own $284.99 Traction Tred Lite.

Some brands get the second half right. Woolrich names the country on every product page I checked, and Pendleton names Mexico where it applies. Filson’s US pages say “Imported,” though its European site names Sri Lanka for the same shirt. Buck Mason marks about half its range “Import” without naming a country. Most Shinola pages say nothing.

Federal rules already require every imported garment to name its country on the sewn-in label. Some brands commendably also display that information clearly in their online catalog. Others leave it on the label, which you only see once the product arrives.

If you want to support American making, the information is available… you just have to look a little deeper. Here’s how to check any listing yourself:

You can find the brands discussed in this article, along with dozens more heritage brands, in the Brand Ledger. Each listing shows what each brand makes in the US and how it labels the rest.

For a few of my personal favorite US-made brands, check out:

In Part 2, I’ll look at a number of brands that invented their heritage from scratch, from a rye whiskey distilled in Indiana and sold on an Iowa Prohibition story to a watch brand that credits a man who died in 1829 with its 2012 launch.

If you know of any excellent American-made brands or products, do share them in the comments or the community. If you live in another country, give your local heroes a shout-out too! Let’s give the companies doing it right some love.

Thank you, as always, for your readership and support.