Could YOU survive without your cheap Chinese essentials? 'Mr Made In America' has done it for decades... now he's sharing his secrets
As many Americans stampede to stores, panic-buying cheap Chinese products while they're available, Mark Andol can put up his Thorogood boots (stitched in Wisconsin), crack open a Yuengling (brewed in Philadelphia) and smile.
For over a decade, Andol, 58, has been Mr Made In America.
The gregarious welder from upstate New York was pushed down this path almost 20 years ago, when a Chinese competitor lured away half his business overnight.
He was making a living fabricating steel posts that went inside plastic fencing, high risers and decks.
But when his main client found a business in China that could go in for fractions of his costs – he was left without work.
You'd think that would make a man bitter. But it's not the case with Andol.
'It's not an anti-Chinese thing, or a red or blue thing – it's a red, white and blue thing,' he tells the Daily Mail. 'It's truly my passion.'
And now, amid President Donald Trump's escalating tariff war with levies on Chinese imports rise to 145 percent, Andol takes immense pride in his place as the nation's greatest champion of US-made goods – a man who puts his money where his mouth is and is now one of the only retailers in the United States that sells 100% American made goods.
Mark Andol (pictured) has earned the title of Mr. Made In America with his unmatched dedication to items made in the US.
The Buffalo-based Made In America store (pictured) meticulously vets each product on its shelves to ensure it is entirely produced in the US.
Though, he admits, 'It's not been easy.'
Andol wakes up every morning in this Buffalo, New York, log cabin which he built himself in 1999, using US-grown cedar.
After rising from a bed made with American Blossom sheets from Georgia, beneath a Country Cottons throw from North Carolina (he rests his head on a South Carolina-made Harris pillow), Andol showers with Dr Squatch soap from California.
Breakfast is baked on Lodge cast iron cookware from Tennessee, and it is eaten with Rada cutlery from Iowa. Perhaps he'll have some honey, gifted from his neighbor's hive.
Andol dresses in All American Company jeans from Ohio – Levi's and Wrangler have long been made in Asia. His feet are clad in Wisconsin's Wigwam socks; he favors Bayside t-shirts and hoodies, from California.
He drives to work in a Ford, explaining: 'I've always liked them.' But perhaps that's where the wheels of the all-American dream come off.
Despite being an American company, and assembling most models in the US, Ford sources 65 percent of its component parts from outside the US or even Canada, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found.
And Andol uses an iPhone, made in China with components from over 40 countries – although he notes the Gorilla Glass screen is by New York-based Corning.
All of his electrical goods are made elsewhere: the United States no longer produces plugs, batteries or incandescent lightbulbs. Ultimately, unless you embrace the idea of living by candlelight and cooking over an open fire, a true all-American existence is impossible.
'My mother is 87; she worked at Fisher-Price toys until they went overseas,' Andol says. 'My dad worked at Bethlehem Steel, and plenty of tools were made there. Back then we could make a coffee pot. Now America has been to the moon but we can't make a toaster.'
The shelves are brimming with items that boast 'Made in America' status - and the storefront has even become a tourist hotspot.
Andol (left) founded his Made In America store 'for country, for soldier, for American worker, and for our children's future.'
Andol said customers are shocked when the America-made goods aren't significantly more expensive than those that are imported.
In 2010, Andol founded his Made In America store 'for country, for soldier, for American worker, and for our children's future.'
Based on the outskirts of Buffalo, he has just welcomed his 1,500th tour bus, and, with business booming, hopes to get 500 more buses this year.
One group came from as far afield as San Diego – a 2,500-mile drive.
'I have a little speech I give the tour buses on arrival,' he says. 'I tell them: did you know that half of all American flags are made overseas? Can we all agree that the American flag should be made in America? And then they usually cheer.'
A father of four, Andol says his youngest child, daughter Jess, was seven when he opened the store, and used to wind him up by declaring loudly in front of customers: 'That's made in China.'
Now, he says, his children – all teenagers and young adults – 'put up with me.' They support his crusade, he adds, and try to buy Made in America as much as they can. But few can match his dedication.
Andol rigorously investigates his 15,000 products, insisting on three letters confirming authenticity, and dropping those who move manufacturing afield.
He did at one point carry coffee from Hawaii – the only US state where the beans will grow – but says sourcing is problematic.
'We had a tea bag, but they changed to overseas manufacturing and we threw them out. Coffee is really hard. Cocoa bean is still a problem.
The store sells nothing with batteries or requiring electricity, as they require foreign-made components.
'I've had manufacturers change screws in their products to be in my store,' he says, adding that people are surprised his goods are not significantly more expensive than imported ones.
Andol mostly relies on goods made in America to survive - from his Georgia-produced bed linens and Tennessee-made cookware to his Ohio-manufactured denim and Wisconsin-made socks.
'I've had manufacturers change screws in their products to be in my store,' Andol says.
His Western New York brick and mortar has become a tourism hotspot, and Andol has welcomed 1,500 buses thus far.
His margins, however, are less.
'We can compete,' he says. 'A lot can be made here. The chip factories for tech are coming. And there's no reason, for electrics, that we can't do the injection molding and plastics – we're very good at that.'
Andol is adamant that America needs to bring pride back to manufacturing and reinstall woodwork and metalwork facilities in schools.
'We have a worker shortage,' he says. 'I'm big on giving kids a purpose. I work with schools to provide internships: we had eight interns learning to weld in the month of March, and they loved it. It really opened their eyes.
'My top guys make $38 an hour and could walk away from this job and be hired tomorrow, there's such a demand. The real problem is that America has got lazy and selfish.'
Andol hopes the US will return to the traditional ways of buying well-made tools and household items that last a lifetime, handing them down through generations.
'It's counterintuitive for someone who owns a store to say this, but people should buy less,' he says, when asked how the US can ever replace the tsunami of Chinese-made products washing up on American shores.
'I don't think we need half the things we buy. But what we do need should be made, as much as possible, in America.'
