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Mark Andol, the Made in America Store, and a Movement That Started in Western New York

When the Made in America Store’s flagship in Elma, New York, closes its doors, Western New York isn’t just losing a shop; it’s saying goodbye to a physical symbol of what “Made in USA” can look like when one person refuses to let offshoring be the final word. The story of founder Mark Andol, his store, and the larger Made in America movement is woven into the last decade and a half of American manufacturing, community pride, and the very early days of social media virality.

For us at The Made in America Movement, this is a personal history. We spent the early 2010s cheering Mark on, sharing his posts, and riding the same wave of organic reach that once allowed our content and manufacturing stories to rack up millions of views in a single day, long before algorithms throttled that kind of grassroots momentum.

Why This Story Matters Now

In early 2026, the owners of the Made in America Store announced that they were selling the building that houses the Elma flagship and entering a liquidation phase. In their public statement, they emphasized that this was not a goodbye so much as a strategic restructuring, a way to pause, grieve, and thoughtfully plan for the future after the sudden loss of founder Mark Andol in 2025.

They were clear about their intent: the goal is to reopen a Made in America Store at a new location and time when circumstances allow, with the online shop temporarily on hold during the transition. For local families and the bus tours that made a stop in Elma part of their Niagara Falls ritual, this closing feels like losing a landmark. For those of us who have been part of the wider Made in America movement since 2010, it’s also a moment to document the story properly, and to make sure the movement doesn’t lose one of its most compelling examples.

From a Welding Shop to a Mission

To understand the Made in America Store, you have to start in a welding shop. Before he became the face of an American‑made retail phenomenon, Mark was a hands‑on tradesman and entrepreneur who built General Welding & Fabricating in Western New York. He launched his first small engine repair business in his father’s garage in 1989 and grew it into a multi‑plant operation with dozens of employees, supplying large industrial customers.

That success was shaken in 2007, when Mark lost multiple multi‑million‑dollar contracts to overseas competitors in a single weekend, a blow that forced him to lay off roughly half his workforce and shut down two of his four welding and fabrication shops. The layoffs included family members, turning what should have been holiday gatherings into a reminder of how vulnerable even strong local businesses had become in the face of offshoring.

Most people would have stopped at survival, consolidate, cut costs, and quietly carry on. Mark decided instead to turn that loss into a line in the sand. If work was being shipped overseas, he would build something that did the opposite: a retail platform that existed solely to save and create American jobs.

Building the Nation’s Only 100% American‑Made Store

In April 2010, Mark opened the first Made in America Store in the vacant showroom of a former auto dealership in Elma, about twenty miles south of Buffalo. On opening day, there were just 50 different products on the shelves, but around 800 people showed up, many of them simply wanting to thank him for taking a stand and telling him he had given them hope.

From the beginning, Mark set a standard that most retailers still avoid: every product had to be 100% American‑made, not just final assembly. That meant domestic sourcing for materials, manufacturing, and even the small details most people never think about, shelves, price stickers, and the glue that held them in place were all sourced from U.S. suppliers. If a supplier couldn’t certify full domestic content, including packaging, the product didn’t go on the shelf.

Over the next few years, the store grew from 2,000 square feet to 6,000 square feet and expanded its assortment to more than 3,800 products by 2013, ranging from clothing and home décor to toys, pet items, camping supplies, food, and more. As the years went on, Mark’s team scaled that assortment to roughly 15,000 items, proving that the problem was never a lack of American‑made products, it was a lack of places willing to do the work of finding them and insisting on clear standards.

Turning Elma into a Destination

What started as a single storefront quickly became a regional and then national destination. Located within easy reach of Niagara Falls and Buffalo, the Made in America Store found a natural partner in the motorcoach industry. Bus operators began adding the store as a stop on tours, discovering that a visit to Elma, part shopping trip, part civics lesson, often became the unexpected highlight of the itinerary.

Mark didn’t treat those buses as anonymous groups. He personally greeted motorcoach arrivals, took photos, and made visitors feel like family, to the point where he celebrated milestones like the 1,300th and 1,500th bus with special recognition and social media shout‑outs. By the time the store marked its 15th anniversary in April 2025, it had welcomed its 1,500th busload of shoppers, a number that says as much about the store’s draw as any sales figure.

Inside, visitors found a retail experience that felt unlike big‑box chains or faceless online marketplaces. Aisles were filled with products that came with stories attached, regional foods from Niagara Falls, American‑made flags, jeans from one of the last domestic denim makers, locally fabricated grills and games from Mark’s welding shop across the road. The store’s layout, events, and even its patriotic concerts with country singer Ricky Lee turned a shopping stop into an experience centered on pride, gratitude for veterans, and curiosity about what is still made in the United States.

Media Attention and National Recognition

Mark’s insistence on “100% Made in America” and his ability to explain why it mattered drew consistent media attention. Over the years, the store was featured in hundreds of print, online, and television segments, including appearances on major national outlets like World News Tonight, Fox & Friends, and NPR, as well as coverage from international media in Russia, Japan, and Korea.

In November 2011, he was invited to the White House for a “Make it in America” conference, underscoring how his little store in Elma had become part of a bigger national conversation about reshoring and rebuilding domestic supply chains. He went on to appear in the 2013 feature documentary “American Made Movie,” which told his story as a fabricator‑turned‑retailer determined to prove that American‑made products could anchor a sustainable business.

Third‑party organizations recognized the scale of what he’d built. In 2019, a major Made in America advocacy group honored the Made in America Store as the nation’s largest Made in America retailer, highlighting both the breadth of its product mix and the rigor of its sourcing requirements. The Alliance for American Manufacturing later called Mark “a true hero of American manufacturing,” noting how he turned business disaster into a proof‑of‑concept that you can, in fact, “make it in America.”

Scaling Beyond the Four Walls

Even before “omnichannel” became a buzzword, Mark understood that the mission couldn’t stop at the front door. The Made in America Store invested early in e‑commerce, building a website that, by 2013, was generating over $100,000 in online sales and had become one of the top sites in the country focused exclusively on American‑made products.

To support both online and in‑store demand, the company opened an 18,000‑square‑foot world distribution center adjacent to its Elma location in 2012, allowing it to increase inventory and streamline fulfillment. With that infrastructure, the store could ship American‑made goods not only across the United States but to customers around the world, turning a rural showroom into a global export point for Made in USA brands.

By 2020, Mark operated eight Made in America Store locations across Western New York, extending the concept beyond its original flagship while still holding the line on 100% American content. It’s hard to overstate how rare that level of consistency is; most “Made in USA” sections in big stores are partial assortments or marketing campaigns layered on top of global supply chains. 

Mark’s model was different: the entire business was built around a single promise.

The Heart of the Movement: Mark’s Vision and Values

What made Mark so effective wasn’t just his business model; it was his ability to express why it mattered in plain language. He often described manufacturing as “the heart of America” and believed that buying American‑made products was one of the most practical ways ordinary people could help save and create American jobs.

He stressed that quality, national security, and community stability were all tied to where and how things were made. When the Alliance for American Manufacturing couldn’t find a Made in USA metal countertop paper towel holder, Mark simply had his fabrication shop build one, turning a small gap in the market into another example of what’s possible when you keep skills and capacity at home.

What impressed many of us in the broader Made in America ecosystem was how little of this was about personal branding for Mark. In interviews, he joked that he wasn’t really a salesman; he was doing it from the heart. He was animated, sometimes blunt, and always clear that he wasn’t interested in politics so much as in getting his neighbors back to work.

Our Path Crossing With Mark and the Store

At The Made in America Movement, our own story runs parallel to Mark’s. We also came online in 2010, in that unique window when social media was still mostly chronological, organic reach was explosive, and a powerful story could cross the country in hours without a single ad dollar behind it.

Between roughly 2010 and 2016, our feeds were filled with images of the Elma store, photos of bus tours pulling in, and snapshots of American‑made products lined up on shelves. We shared Mark’s posts, he amplified ours, and our communities overlapped and cross‑pollinated in a way that only happens when there’s no formal contract, just shared values and a sense that we were all building something bigger than ourselves.

During that period, it wasn’t unusual to see patriotic content, manufacturing success stories, and Made in USA product spotlights earn massive levels of daily reach. Our pages helped drive people to discover businesses like the Made in America Store, while their visible success provided tangible proof we could point to when skeptics asked whether consumer behavior could ever really change. The relationship picked up again during 2020–2021, when COVID‑19 supply chain shocks pushed “Made in USA” back into mainstream headlines, and we found ourselves once more telling the same story from two sides, Mark on the retail front lines, and our team amplifying across platforms.

There was never a formal partnership, and we prefer it that way. What we shared with Mark was a peer‑to‑peer relationship rooted in mutual respect: a store in Western New York fighting for American jobs, and a national movement community doing everything we could to make sure stories like his were seen, heard, and remembered.

The Early Social Media Era: Millions of Organic Eyes

If you weren’t there for those early years, it’s hard to explain just how different the social media landscape was between 2010 and 2016. “Boost post” wasn’t yet the default answer to every growth problem, and the idea of throttled reach or pay‑to‑play distribution hadn’t fully arrived.

In that environment, the combination of Mark’s in‑person charisma and our digital storytelling created a kind of flywheel. A bus tour would post photos from the store. We would reshare them with commentary about the resurgence of American manufacturing. The store would post about a new American‑made product line, and thousands of patriotic consumers, and manufacturers themselves, would tag friends, ask questions, and start threads about where things were really made.

There were weeks where we could see millions of organic impressions on movement‑related content in a single day, with no ad budget and no hooks beyond authenticity, pride, and curiosity. The Made in America Store became one of the clearest “answers” we could give whenever a viral thread broke out around questions like: “Is there anywhere I can shop where I know everything is Made in USA?”

As algorithms tightened and organic reach shrank in the late 2010s, those early years took on even more importance. They built durable brand recognition, seeded backlinks, and established entities, —like “Made in America Store,” “Mark Andol,” and “Made in America Movement”, that still show up today in search results and AI‑driven summaries of the American‑made space.

Community, Veterans, and the Human Side of the Store

From the outside, it’s easy to talk about square footage and product counts. From the inside, the legacy people remember most is how the store felt. Tributes after Mark’s passing emphasized his generosity, his enthusiasm for veterans, and his willingness to host events like Honor Flight fundraisers and military‑focused promotions.

The store’s work with country singer Ricky Lee is a good example. Ricky had written a patriotic song about buying American. Mark loved it, but insisted the CD and its packaging be 100% Made in USA before it could be sold in the store. Once they found a domestic producer, they created a campaign where a portion of each CD went to the VFW Military Assistance Program and where concerts at the store raised funds to help send veterans to Washington, D.C., to see the World War II Memorial.

Those were extensions of the same instinct that led Mark to show up at bus arrivals, talk directly with customers, and bring in local groups like the American Legion to display projects and fundraise on site. The result is that, when people talk about the Made in America Store now, they talk about faces, conversations, and memories, not just receipts.

The Elma Flagship: Closing a Chapter, Not the Book

The January 2026 announcement that the Elma building was being sold landed like a gut punch for many in Western New York and far beyond. The store’s owners, Mark’s family and longtime leaders, were transparent about the emotional and practical realities: losing Mark unexpectedly in July 2025 meant learning to run a mission‑driven business without its founder, while navigating grief and an evolving retail landscape.

Their statement called the decision a “strategic restructuring,” stressing that they intended to reopen a Made in America Store at a new location and that the liquidation phase and online pause were temporary measures to create breathing room. For a business built so heavily on personal relationships and in‑person experiences, choosing to step back rather than drift was an act of stewardship, not retreat.

From our vantage point in the broader movement, this moment feels less like an ending and more like a baton pass. The physical store that anchored so many stories may go quiet for a season, but the standards it set and the proof it provided, that consumers will support rigorous Made in USA sourcing when given the chance, are now part of the movement’s DNA.

What Mark’s Story Teaches Future Makers and Retailers

If you’re building an American‑made brand, running a factory, or dreaming of your own version of the Made in America Store, there are some clear lessons in Mark’s story:

  • Set a clear, non‑negotiable standard. Mark’s 100% American‑made requirement, including packaging and materials, made his store instantly understandable and deeply trustworthy, even if it meant saying no to products that didn’t quite measure up.
  • Use retail as a storytelling platform. He didn’t just stock shelves; he told the stories behind the products, invited media into the space, and turned bus tours into live teaching opportunities about what’s still made in America.
  • Treat partners as collaborators, not just vendors. From small manufacturers to tour operators and movement organizations, Mark built genuine relationships based on shared values. That’s part of why the motorcoach industry and manufacturing advocates grieved his loss so deeply—they saw him as one of their own.
  • Invest in both local and digital infrastructure. The Elma flagship, the distribution center, multiple regional locations, and a strong e‑commerce presence all worked together to make American‑made products accessible whether you lived in Western New York or across the country.

For us at The Made in America Movement, Mark’s example continues to shape how we think about certifications, storytelling, and partnerships. He proved that you can hold a hard line on sourcing and still build an inviting, human, joyful customer experience.

How We Honor Mark—and Where the Movement Goes From Here

Honoring Mark’s legacy means more than sharing memories when the lights go out at a flagship store. It means carrying the underlying mission forward in ways that fit this moment:

  • We keep educating consumers. Our work at The Made in America Movement remains focused on helping Americans understand why origin matters, how to read labels, and where to find brands that are transparent about their supply chains.
  • We support rigorous standards. Mark’s insistence on 100% American‑made products inspires our push for clearer definitions, stronger verification, and meaningful Made in USA certifications that consumers can trust.
  • We build bridges between manufacturers and marketplaces. Just as the Made in America Store gave small manufacturers shelf space and storytelling, we focus on highlighting makers, connecting them to buyers, and pushing platforms to make domestic sourcing more discoverable.
  • We invest in modern distribution and digital reach. The distribution center in Elma was an early sign that infrastructure matters as much as messaging. Today, that includes not only physical logistics but also answer‑engine optimization, schema markup, and entity‑level SEO that help ensure that when someone asks “Where can I buy Made in USA products?” they get meaningful, verified answers.

The best way to honor Mark is to make sure that the next generation of American‑made founders doesn’t have to answer “Does this model even work?” We already know it does. He proved it… one welding contract lost, one store opened, and one busload of curious shoppers at a time.

Continue to RIP, my friend. You are greatly missed. – Margarita xo

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It’s Time to End China’s Most Favored Nation Status

China was granted Most Favored Nation status through presidential proclamation on an annual basis from 1980 – 1998. This was because the Trade Act of 1974 stated that “MFN status may not be conferred on a country with a nonmarket economy if that country maintains restrictive emigration policies” China was, and still is, a nonmarket economy and restricted emigration, but the Act allowed the president to “waive this prohibition on an annual basis if he certifies that granting MFN status would promote freedom of emigration in that country.”

According to CRS Report 98-603 for Congress, “China’s Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) Status: Congressional Consideration, 1989-1998:” After the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, there was enough opposition to granting MFN status to China that the “House passed joint resolutions disapproving MFN for China in both 1991 and 1992,” but the Senate didn’t pass the joint resolution. However, the real focus of the debate was not whether to deny MFN status for China altogether, but whether or not to “place new human rights conditions on China’s MFN eligibility.” Congress passed legislation in 1991 and 1992 that would have placed further conditions on China’s MFN status, but President Bush vetoed the legislation.

In 1993, President Clinton announced he would link China’s MFN status to human rights progress beginning in 1994. However, President Clinton reneged on his campaign promise and reversed himself: “On June 2, 1995, President Clinton transmitted to Congress his intention to waive the emigration prohibition and extend MFN status to the People’s Republic of China for an additional year, beginning July 3, 1995.”

An L.A. Times article of May 27, 1994, reported: “President Clinton, abandoning a central foreign policy principle of his Administration, announced Thursday that he has decided to “de-link” China’s privileged trading status from its human rights record. While acknowledging that China “continues to commit very serious human rights abuses,” Clinton said that he has come to believe that broader American strategic interests justify the policy reversal.”

The annual granting of MFN status to China by a presidential waiver continued through 1998. Note that “On July 22, 1998, legislation was enacted which replaced the term “most-favored-nation” in certain U.S. statutes with the term “normal trade relations.” This made it easier for Congress to make the fateful decision to extend “permanent normal trade relations,” or PNTR, to China when the Senate voted to give China permanent most-favored-nation status on September 19, 2000. This vote paved the way for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization.

As Reihan Salam, President of the Manhattan Institute wrote in an article titled

“Normalizing Trade Relations With China Was a Mistake,” in the June 8, 2018 issue of The Atlantic, “PNTR was a euphemism designed to get around the fact that the traditional term for “normal trade relations” was “most-favored-nation” (MFN) tariff status…MFN status meant imports would be treated as favorably as those arriving from “the most favored nation.” Absurd as it might sound, this linguistic convention had meaningful political consequences. To argue that we ought to have normal trade relations with China was one thing. Sure, why not? To make the case that China ought to be treated as our most favored nation was a more vexing PR challenge, not least in the wake of the brutal crackdown that followed the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989.”

An article in the American Economic Review, “The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment,” by Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott, July 7, 2016, states:

“The permanence of PNTR status made an enormous difference: Without PNTR, there was always a danger that China’s favorable access to the U.S. market would be revoked, which in turn deterred U.S. firms from increasing their reliance on Chinese suppliers. With PNTR in hand, the floodgates of investment were opened, and U.S. multinationals worked hand-in-glove with Beijing to create new China-centric supply chains.” https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20131578

This change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports resulted in industries that were more vulnerable to the change experiencing greater employment loss, increased imports from China, and higher entry into the U.S. market by U.S. importers and foreign-owned Chinese exporters. My three books and the hundreds of articles I’ve written since 2009 have described what has happened to U.S. manufacturing since 2001. Besides the loss of 5.8 million manufacturing jobs and the closure of an estimated 67,000 American manufacturers, American manufacturing shifted toward more high-tech, less labor-intensive production. However, as China upgraded their technology in the past few years, we started losing our high-tech manufacturing also.

In addition to the annual reports to Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission documenting China’s violation of World Trade Organization rules along with human rights violations, the U.S. Department of State submits an annual report on International Religious Freedom in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. According to the 2018 International Religious Freedom Report :

“Multiple media and NGOs estimated the government detained at least 800,000 and up to possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim groups, mostly Chinese citizens, in specially built or converted detention facilities in Xinjiang and subjected them to forced disappearance, torture, physical abuse, and prolonged detention without trial because of their religion and ethnicity since April 2017.  There were reports of deaths among detainees.  Authorities maintained extensive and invasive security and surveillance, in part to gain information regarding individuals’ religious adherence and practices.” 

America vs China

Therefore, it gave me great pleasure when I read that on September 17, 2020, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) introduced a bill (S.4609) that “would strip China of its permanent most-favored-nation status—also known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations—a designation it has held for the last twenty years. If passed, the legislation would make extending most-favored-nation status to China an annual decision for Congress and the president.”

Cotton said, “Twenty years ago this week, the Senate gave a gift to the Chinese Communist Party by granting it permanent most-favored-nation status. That disastrous decision made the Party richer, but cost millions of American jobs. It’s time to protect American workers and take back our leverage over Beijing by withdrawing China’s permanent trade status.”

Senator Cotton’s press release states:

“The China Trade Relations Act would revoke China’s permanent most-favored-nation status and return to the pre-2001 status quo, whereby China’s MFN status must be renewed each year by presidential decision. Congress could override the president’s extension of MFN by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

The bill also would expand the list of human-rights and trade abuses under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that would disqualify China for MFN status, absent a presidential waiver. The abuses that would make China ineligible for MFN status, absent a presidential waiver, are as follows:

  • Uses or provides for the use of slave labor;
  • Operates ‘vocational training and education centers’ or other concentration camps where people are held against their will;
  • Performs or otherwise orders forced abortion or sterilization procedures;
  • Harvests the organs of prisoners without their consent;
  • Hinders the free exercise of religion;
  • Intimidates or harasses nationals of the People’s Republic of China living outside the People’s Republic of China; or
  • Engages in systematic economic espionage against the United States, including theft of the intellectual property of United States persons”

China’s strategic goal is to dominate the sectors of economic growth that historically have held the key to world power: transportation energy, information, and manufacturing. Their “Made in China 2025” plan is designed to dominate key technology sectors such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, and 5G. They also plan to become the dominant power in space by 2049.

If this bill isn’t passed in the Lame Duck session, I strongly urge that it be reintroduced into the next Congress and passed unanimously next year. It’s time China for us to stop treating China as a friend and recognize China as the enemy to our national sovereignty it is.