What “Made in Los Angeles, California, USA” means to me
I’m the Creative Director of a company called This is Ground and we design & manufacture our products in Los Angeles, California. “Made in the USA” or specifically “Made in LA” is meaningful to people for many different reasons all over the world, but I thought I’d take a minute and share why “Made in LA” is meaningful to me.
Some context is the background of This is Ground’s brand story — rooted in two parts — my obsessive desire to organize my gear and the Los Angeles maker community.
My organizational obsession come from a crazy job I had in my early twenties when I was part of an airship (aka blimp tour). I was one of fifteen guys traveling the country with a blimp that carried cameras for sporting events. We would bounce from one city to the next every two weeks - similar to a circus! There was lots of gear i.e. helium tanks, hoses, generators, and loads of other strange blimp equipment stored in these amazing bins called “Action Packers”. Beyond the blimp equipment, each crewman had their own personal belongings to take from hotel to campsite to hotel & back again. Some guys had video game consoles, others had larger toys like Harley Davidson’s. We were all adventure pros — quickly setting up and breaking down blimp sites and temporary homes.
Side note: the name of the business “This is Ground” comes from how I would communicate with the pilots in the blimp. I would use a VHF radio and say “560 alpha bravo, this is ground..”
But the blimp job is just the meat to my taco shell. I’ve actually been a nomad for most of my life — I moved around a lot as a kid and again after the blimp job. I love adventure as there’s so much to explore. And with that, I carry somewhat a personal intimacy with my gear — my scribbled journals, favorite pencils, headphones, phones, tablets, and hell, even special blankets like Linus.
While traveling meticulously has played a big part in how this business was shaped — so has Los Angeles and its inspirational maker community. When I was asked to create a new way to organize cords, I was in LA and just had tacos. I was also living downtown, near the fashion district. I knew of LA’s deep history in manufacturing and its wealth of seasoned makers, studios and factories. And so it became, LA’s ambitious creative flavors took its roots in our brand — along side of our first Cord Taco.
We connected with our manufacturing partners.
While I did enjoy hand making each item, the latter couldn’t scale so I connected with a couple manufacturing partners. The primarily spanish speaking factory chuckled at the Cord Taco and welcomed me in. They got a kick out of my aluminum foil, duct tape, and paper patterns and I invested the time to learn from them, taking lots of video and photos, asking lots of questions, and appreciating the time. They were patient, understanding & cool. My visits increased and inspiration set in.
Handcrafted needs to be witnessed to be appreciated.
When you see the hands of the people that make our goods, it’s almost like taking a trip through time. The scars and wear and tear are clear. It’s more of a genuine expression than a tattoo. It’s the physical DNA that represents how these masters are wired. It’s the collective intellect from their ancestors, their memory muscle and responsibility of the relics of new design. What goes into a hand made zipper or precise cutting and stitching is overwhelming.
The process
My process of design and building has a closer resemblance to a tech startup than a traditional physical goods company. Making it in LA with teams that are invested in the craft, allow us to reach an optimal solution in an efficient manner. We prototype in our studio, test it with our core team and iterate rapidly. Then we’ll have our manufacturing team craft a small batch for our Instagram followers to carry the goods and provide feedback — then we iterate again. Because there’s so much back and forth with our factories and design, this would be otherwise impossible to do in a timely manner outside of the 1.5 mile radius.
Finally, our signal that we’re on to something is when we hear from our testers that “I can’t leave my house without this now.”
While the products are derived from my journeys, they are rooted in LA’s deep knowledge of craft — and now our products travel the globe with our community, bringing back new insights, leading to better iterations and being an integral tool to creative work worldwide.
If you’re ever in LA and want to meet the team and check out our studio, drop us a line. A great time and day to visit is lunchtime on Taco Tuesdays. Also when you see “Craft Edition” on our goods, that’s a symbol of this part of our story — a deep appreciation for the maker community here in LA.
thisisground.com / macadaan.com / science-inc.com / instagram.com/thisisground
