About Us

  

Who we are
We are the world's first global 'country of origin resource' for consumer goods and vehicles, and have a first page ranking on Google. We also recently featured in a Mashable Top Ten guide to socially responsible shopping.

What we do
We show you the country of origin of thousands of new consumer goods, from Apple iPhones to Zojirushi coffee makers, using Google Maps. More products are being added regularly. We also provide resources and links to help you explore the issues around country of origin. At the moment we show you simply the place of final assembly of finished products, but future collaborations with other partners will allow us to help you explore the sources of components too for many products. We hope our supporters' donations will help us provide this additional service next year. We recently organised the COOLXmas competition centred on the country of origin of consumer goods, and we think this type of competition has never been done before.

Why we do it
More and more people now think that manufacturing industry is the bedrock of a country's economy and that outsourcing so much of it in the past may have been a mistake. Our site can help those who want to support more local manufacturing companies by showing where they assemble their products. For a personal overview on why manufacturing still matters, you could try a global consultant like Bill Waddell at the site Evolving Excellence, or read some of the current articles in the online Harvard Business Review on rebuilding the economy.

Many environmentalists also want to buy more locally, and avoid products with huge carbon footprints from shipping and air freight, as part of a more sustainable lifestyle. You can also take a look at the 'CO2 Issues' on the lower menu bar, to see how countries compare in emissions, and to find out more about CO2 and transport concerns.


How the site can be used
Our database can make it easier for people who want to buy things made more locally to find them. It can help people who want to avoid products made in countries with levels of CO2 emissions, or other policies they're not happy about. It can help young people find out more about important things like globalisation and outsourcing, and the inbuilt Google Map results display makes country of origin issues come alive in the classroom.


What we also do
We support manufacturing industry, and we like to highlight companies that are involved in innovation in design. You can see the Showcase page for examples. We hope to be able to examine supply chains for some of the products we feature with the help of our partners at leading universities next year.
 

We'd also like to help people discover all the small manufacturers in their countries that they didn't know about. For example, if you go to Cars &Vehicles > Cars/Vehicles > Specialist Brands, you can sort the results by country of origin to find almost 100 smaller-scale car companies you probably never knew existed. You can visit many of their websites easily from there.

Find out more
Whatever your reason for wanting to find out more about country of origin, we hope you will find our site a valuable resource. The Resources page connects you to some of the best writing on the issues, and the Education page has lots of ideas for school and college lessons, and projects. For a quick guide as to why Country Of Origin really does still matter, see the Blog entries with this heading.