Us vs. Them
"Made In America!". It's a phrase you see quite often, but what does it really mean? The interpretation is that it is 100% domestic derived and built, but that simply isn't true. The truth is that marketing strategists have manipulated words so that more people will buy a product based on a catchy phrase rather than the truth behind the words. Another one is "Buy Green" but I'll leave that for another day. Today I want to focus on products.
You see "Made In Canada Matters" or "Proudly Made In (insert the city that gives the biggest tax breaks) are just words. They mean that the final assembly of a product happened there. But where did the pieces come from? Leather from Mexico, seats from Canada, wiring harnesses from Indonesia, computers from China, and lights from Germany. This is just a few and these suppliers all make parts to the OEM's standards before being shipped for final assembly. You see where the origin does not necessarily impact final quality. Back in the 1970's-80's the stigma was that products from Japan were sub-par, in the 90's Korea and Mexico fell victim, and today China is the main focus. The reality is that regardless where something is made, it can be made well or poorly. The determining factors are the materials, the quality control processes and the refinements made during testing.
At Grassroots Performance we source and make parts locally and across the world because diversity allows us and YOU to remain competitive against the factory teams with pockets as deep as they want to be. We do our development here, we do our testing here and we stand behind our products because we use them on our own cars. It's what made us start a company in the first place.
