Furniture manufacturer John Bassett III is out with a new book — and you can ask him about it.
Back in 2014, the Alliance for American Manufacturing celebrated National Manufacturing Day by hosting a book party for Factory Man, the New York Times bestseller that told the story of John Bassett III.
Bassett, you recall, is the third-generation furniture maker who refused to offshore production and fought to keep his business Made in America. He did so by filing what was then the largest-ever anti-dumping petition in history against China. And he won.
Now Bassett is out with his own book, Making It In America, in which he shares a 12 point plan for keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States. We’re hosting a shindig for Bassett here at AAM headquarters on Thursday evening; if you are in the D.C. area, please stop by!
But if not, please join us over on Facebook at 4:30 p.m. ET, where AAM President Scott Paul will host a special Q&A with Bassett to talk about the book. You will even have the opportunity to ask Bassett a question via Facebook.
Paul also has a review of the book up over at Medium. As he notes, many of Bassett’s ideas for revitalizing American manufacturing are pretty spot-on, and his passion for his workers is clear:
John runs the largest wood bedroom manufacturing plant in the United States, and as he likes to tell it, has ‘sawdust running through my veins.’ While nearly every other furniture maker headed to China, keeping only their customers in America, John not only stood by his workers, he invested more in them and his factories. His team developed new lines of products.
And when it was clear his business, under siege, was facing knock-offs and impossibly prices competition from China, he took the cheaters on by filing a trade case and jawboning a majority of the domestic industry to join him.
You can read Paul’s entire book review here, RSVP to the book party here and tune into the Facebook Q&A here.