About Us

  

Who we are
Made In Nations is a not-for-profit organisation showing the country of origin of thousands of popular consumer goods and cars. With the help of our supporters in leading universities in the UK, USA, and France, our support groups on Facebook, and our Twitter page followers (at @madeinnations), we try to give you the most up-to-date information we can find. We are the world's first global 'country of origin resource' for consumer goods, with a first page ranking on Google. We also recently featured in a Mashable Top Ten guide to socially responsible shopping.

What we do
We show you the country of origin of thousands of new consumer goods, from Apple iPhones to Zojirushi coffee makers, using Google Maps. More products are being added regularly by our crowdsourced community of contributors. We also provide resources and links to help you explore the issues around country of origin. At the moment we show you simply the place of final assembly of finished products, but future collaborations with other partners will allow us to help you explore the sources of components too for many products. We hope our supporters' donations will help us provide this additional service next year. We're currently organising the COOLXmas competition centred on the country of origin of consumer goods, and we think this type of competition has never been done before.

Why we do it
Climate Change is recognised by most governments as a serious issue, and there are now many environmentalists who want to buy more locally, and avoid products with huge carbon footprints from shipping and air freight, as part of a more sustainable lifestyle. You can also take a look at the 'CO2 Issues' on the lower menu bar, to see how countries compare in emissions, and to find out more about CO2 and transport concerns.

Some people think that manufacturing industry is the bedrock of a country's economy and that outsourcing so much of it in the past may have been a mistake. Our site helps people who want to support more local manufacturing companies by showing where they assemble their products. For a personal overview on why manufacturing still matters, you could try a global consultant like Bill Waddell at his site, or read some of the current articles in the online Harvard Business Review on rebuilding the economy.


How the site can be used
Our database can make it easier for people who want to buy things made more locally to find them. It can help people who want to avoid products made in countries with levels of CO2 emissions they're not happy about. It can help young people find out more about important things like globalisation and outsourcing, and the inbuilt Google Map results display makes country of origin issues come alive in the classroom.

What we also do
We want to celebrate the creativity of manufacturing industry, and we like to highlight companies that are involved in innovation in design. You can see the Showcase page for examples. We hope to highlight developments in 'Lean and Green' production methods too, and examine supply chains for some of the products we feature with the help of our partners at leading universities next year.
 

We'd like to help people discover all the small manufacturers in their countries that they didn't know about. For example, if you go to Cars &Vehicles > Cars/Vehicles > Specialist Brands, you can sort the results by country of origin to find almost 100 smaller-scale car companies you probably never knew existed. You can visit many of their websites easily from there.

Find out more
Whatever your reason for wanting to find out more about country of origin, we hope you will find our site a valuable resource. The Resources page connects you to some of the best writing on the issues, and the Education page has lots of ideas for school and college lessons, and projects.