How We Choose Products
One test decides whether a product belongs on this site: can we verify, from the maker's own words, that it is made in the USA. No brand pays for placement.
Country of origin is a product fact, not a brand fact
A company's headquarters is not its factory. Plenty of brands design in Oregon and sew in Vietnam, and the address on the website tells you nothing about the item in your hand.
So we verify per product, not per brand. Before an item is listed, we find the maker's own statement about where that specific item is made, and we record the link and the date we checked.
Three honest outcomes
- Verified US-made. The item is listed, with the source behind it.
- Verified imported. The item comes off the list. It does not get a footnote or a caveat.
- Genuinely mixed. Some brands run a US-made line alongside imported goods. We name the specific line rather than pick a city, and if we cannot tell which is which, the item does not go up.
If a brand publishes no country of origin at all, that is not a pass. It is a no.
Unfinished research is not a fact
An entry that reads “varies” or “check the tag” is a note to ourselves, not an answer. Our build now refuses to publish a product whose origin has no source link and no verification date, so those notes cannot reach the page by accident.
We do not score products
This site used to show a Workshop Score out of 10. It has been removed. The number implied a measurement we were not actually taking, and a decimal point is a strong claim to make about a pair of boots.
Products are ordered by who we think each one suits best, and that reasoning is written out on the page where you can disagree with it.
When we get it wrong
We publish the correction rather than quietly deleting the entry. A dated note stays on the page saying what we claimed and what we found. If a listing here is wrong, tell me — I would rather fix it than defend it.