Gordon Brush Manufacturing Co. Inc., with its production facilities in California and Wisconsin, has a long history of making industrial brush products including “dustless” factory floor-sweepers, brushes designed to clean the insides of machinery and fine camel-hair tools artists use to create oil paintings.

Its sales have been increasing in double-digit percentages annually, mostly through distributors—many of whom sell through the Amazon.com marketplace, says Alan Schechter, director of sales and marketing. The privately held company, which doesn’t report financial numbers, also does a small amount of sales directly through its own e-commerce sites.  

But despite its focus on quality manufacturing under standards set by the International Organization of Standardization, Schechter says, it still faces pushback from prospective customers who say they can’t buy from Gordon Brush. “It happens all the time, I get slammed by customers who say, ‘I can’t buy your products,’” he says.

The typical reason for the pushback, he adds, is that buyers can easily purchase from other lower-cost suppliers, which are often based in China or other foreign markets—even though, Schechter contends, the product quality is not up to Gordon’s standards. “They want the lowest price, and it doesn’t matter if they use a brush three times and it falls apart,” he says.

But Schechter and Gordon Brush aren’t sitting back, he adds. Schechter says he has noticed an increased interest in recent years among a growing number of buyers for products manufactured in the United States, and he constantly searches the web for opportunities to capitalize on the trend. One of the most promising, he says, is working through a “Made in the USA” program offered through marketing firm American Certified and Amazon.com Inc.

Gordon Brush, one of thousands manufacturers certified by American Certified as a supplier of U.S.-made products, is gaining exposure through American Certified on Amazon.com. In addition to certifying companies as “American-made” suppliers, American Certified operates as a marketing service that routes online buyers through various online marketing programs to AmericanCertified.com, where visitors can view product images and specifications, read customer reviews and click into an American Certified seal that verifies that a product was made completely or least partly in the U.S. American Certified works with manufacturers who are already selling through Amazon, but it will also help manufacturers get set up to sell through the Amazon.com marketplace if they don’t already.

Clicking the add-to-cart button on the American Certified page activates a pop-up shopping cart window displaying the one or more products a customer has carted on AmericanCertified.com; the customer then can click “Checkout with Amazon” to complete the purchase on Amazon.com, where fulfillment is handled directly by Gordon’s distributors or via the Fulfillment By Amazon service.

American Certified doesn’t charge any fees to manufacturers; it earns its revenue through referral commissions paid by Amazon, says Marvin Weinberger, CEO of American Certified. “There’s no charge to manufacturers to join or use American Certified,” he says. “They receive the same money regardless of how customers buy their products on Amazon.” In other words, if customers find a Gordon Brush distributor’s listing on Amazon.com without first passing through American Certified.com, Gordon earns the same profit margin.

For Gordon Brush, which has been working with American Certified for a few months, the program is mainly a way to help its distributors sell through Amazon, Schechter says. Although Gordon hasn’t been able to quantify yet how many sales are coming through American Certified, Schechter says he’s confident the program is helping to increase exposure of Gordon’s products among buyers looking for U.S.-made goods. In addition to its lines of some 15,000 industrial brushes, the company also sells one line of consumer-oriented personal hygiene products under the FootMate brand. The company also sells those products on FootMate.com as well as through Amazon and American Certified.

Gordon Brush also plans to include a forthcoming American Certified label on each product package shipped through distributors or directly to end-customers, Schechter says. “We expect people will recognize the label and we’ll become identified visibly with the seal of American Certified.”

American Certified is planning to introduce soon a web analytics application that will provide its client manufacturers with information on referrals from AmericanCertified.com to Amazon.com and subsequent sales, Weinberger says.

It’s also working to drive traffic to its site through two main marketing programs. The largest program involves its efforts to build out a network of affiliate sites, including blogs and other content sites that focus on products made in the U.S. In a new program slated for this fall and geared more toward consumer buyers, American Certified has arranged for articles on “Made in USA” gift guides, featuring products from its client manufacturers, to appear in national media including Entrepreneur magazine and the daily newspapers The Washington Post and the New York Daily News. Manufacturers listed with American Certified will be able to participate in a paid-ad campaign designed to draw more viewers to the gift guides. Manufacturers can participate as advertisers for a minimum campaign cost of $5,000, which will enable them to purchase paid ads at discounted rates.

American Certified also promotes market research that suggests that buyers will spend more for products made in the U.S. than other countries. It cites one 2012 survey of 5,000 buyers by the Boston Consulting Group, for example, that found that 80% said they would pay more for products labeled “Made in USA” as compared with those labeled “Made in China.”

For a free subscription to B2BecNews, a weekly newsletter that covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry, click here. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes the monthly trade magazine Internet Retailer.

Favorite