‘Us is spelled U.S.’: The Crafted With Pride campaign and the fight against deindustrialization in the textile and apparel industry.

This article explores the ‘Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A.’ campaign, a high-profile effort to encourage American consumers to buy domestically made textiles and apparel. Using a wide range of sources, this study examines an important campaign that has received little scholarly attention. Launched in 1984, the initial seven-year operation cost $100 million, and the funds were used to sponsor Miss America and to purchase national advertising on network television, including commercials that featured celebrities such as Ted Danson, Linda Evans, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Hall, and Bob Hope. Funding was provided by both textile and apparel companies and by labor unions, who put aside their historic differences, because they recognized the seriousness of the import threat. Roger Milliken – a powerful executive with considerable political influence – also bankrolled the campaign. Overall, the Crafted With Pride effort did succeed in uniting the industry and in winning some important backers, most notably, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. Overtime, however – and especially after Walton's death in 1992 – both Wal-Mart and some textile and apparel producers began to embrace off-shore production, and the campaign also struggled to change consumer behavior. Ultimately, importers and retailers prevailed, paving the way for the domestic industry's decline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]