It didn't start with a business plan. It started in a brick factory in India.
If you're reading this and you're an American, I'd bet you can think of a reason you personally value American-made products. Maybe you've even got a story about it — I hope I get to hear it someday.
Mine starts with a video. Two years ago I watched a documentary called The Rise and Fall of America's Middle Class, put out by Origin — the workout apparel and outdoor gear brand making all of it here in my home state of North Carolina. It finally lit something that had been sitting in me, half-built, since 2008.
I was a brand-new filmmaker, traveling through India, volunteering my camera to nonprofits. One of them was International Justice Mission (IJM) — an organization that rescues people from forced labor. A staffer at their Chennai office asked if I'd come along with my camera to a brick-making factory they suspected was running on slave labor. Our cover story was a National Geographic piece on local culture. The owner bought it. We got in.
What I saw, I'll never forget. A girl who couldn't have been more than five, dressed in rags, working equipment heavier than she was. An elderly man, maybe in his 90s, pushing a loaded wheelbarrow through the heat, who could barely have walked on his own otherwise.
IJM used my footage as evidence. It helped local authorities raid that camp, arrest the people running it, and free the children inside.
I know buying American-made doesn't erase what those kids endured. But it's what I can actually do, right now: find hard-working Americans, put their craftsmanship on camera, and back what they make — because I've seen firsthand the quality, the passion, and the fair conditions behind it.
Our country took a stand against imported goods from day one. In 1769, George Mason wrote to George Washington about how necessary — if painful — it was to stop importing from Great Britain:
"Our all is at stake, and the little conveniences & comforts of life, when set in competition with our liberty, ought to be rejected not with reluctance but with pleasure." — George Mason to George Washington, 5 April 1769
That hit me. After a decade filming for nonprofits and businesses, I started my own production company in 2018 — Anthem Film — on that same conviction: serve American businesses, employ American filmmakers and editors, period.
Every single day, millions of American business owners and consumers outsource and buy overseas for the obvious reason — it's cheaper. Guess what else is cheaper overseas? The quality.
Two reasons that keeps happening. One I can't fix: NAFTA, the 1996 agreement that opened the floodgates and helped shut down millions of small American businesses, some in a matter of months. The other, I think I actually can help with — most Americans don't realize it's still possible to buy American-made. Yes, it's few and far between in a lot of industries. But it's out there.
That was two years ago. I've been building This Is American Made ever since — tirelessly researching and tracking down incredible USA-made brands, one at a time.
— Brett
Their factories. Their American workers. Their finished products out in the field. Made easy to find, and easy to buy.
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