“I walked away from the biggest offer my company had ever received.”

Marvin Weinberger is a serial entrepreneur who recently focused his efforts on creating the world’s largest USA-Made Ecommerce Superstore, AmericanCertified.com, which currently offers 1.3 million products.

AmericanCertified.com empowers consumers to shop their values and make buying American a hassle-free, fun experience.

The American Certified team would like to invite you to participate in their $150 sweepstakes giveaway, good for any product across AmericanCertified.com.  The dates for the giveaway are Nov 1st – Dec 10^th and you can enter here: http://americancertified.com/blog/holiday-giveaway-contest/

BusinessInterviews.com:  What inspired you to launch a business based around selling American made products?

Marvin:  Prior to founding AmericanCertified.com, I was only operating InnovationFactory.com, a USA-Made tools company – a company which is now just one of thousands of makers with USA products on AmericanCertified.com.  A buyer for a national retail chain I’d been trying to land for seven months had finally agreed to place an order with Innovation Factory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I felt as excited as a kid on his birthday.  It was my big break!  But they told me, “There’s just one condition.  You have to let us offshore the manufacturing to our China facilities.”  I wanted to scream with frustration.  So three days later, I called him back.  “I can’t do it.”  He insisted.  And I walked away from the biggest offer my company had ever received.

I started AmericanCertified.com because I wanted to make it easy for Americans to shop their values, and make it easier for American workers to keep their jobs due to the increased demand.

Of course, the actual financial opportunity was a huge factor.  Surveys from Pew Foundation, the US government, AARP, Jupiter Research, Nielsen, and other major agencies show a major preferences for buying American – especially among baby boomers.  Despite this, it was nearly impossible to sort USA made goods from overseas imports.  AmericanCertified.com makes it easy to buy American because we have, by far, the world’s largest selection.

BusinessInterviews.com:  What was the biggest challenge that you’ve faced while developing American Certified and how did you overcome it?

Marvin: The immense scope of technology necessary to make this a reality seemed almost impossible at times – and there were many times when I felt we had come up against an insurmountable obstacle in developing the technology.  I’ve been fortunate to have some brilliant programmers on my team who have been equally committed to the vision.  Now that we’ve actually built the underlying technology, we’re pretty much in heaven.

BusinessInterviews.com:  Can you talk about the process behind expanding your selection by over 3.5 million products within just 4 months and what that entails?

Marvin: Our tech team has built a powerful search tool that uses “searchonyms” for USA-made to scrape Amazon.com for products. As of right now, we have identifiedover 3,000 different ways to say USA-made in order to find all the possibilities for our site.  The vast array of searchonyms enables our technology to filter through 220,000,000 Amazon products to find the ones which support American workers.

BusinessInterviews.com:  Where does your passion for entrepreneurship come from?

Marvin: I’ve always been an inventor with a penchant for building mansions in the sky and building the stairway later.  I helped lead one of my former companies to a successful IPO in 2002.  Entrepreneurship is my way of creating the world I want to live in – I believe there is always opportunity to create a better, more sustainable world.

BusinessInterviews.com:  Can you talk about the importance of the Multiplier Effect when it comes to purchasing American made products?

Marvin:  Every dollar spent in American manufacturing also generates an additional $1.35  through the economic multiplier effect and co-investment into the community. With millions of products to choose from on our site, there is a lot of economic health to be generated with American Certified alone.  However, I also hope that this new shopping platform will encourage more manufacturers to bring all of their operations – and jobs – back to the US.

BusinessInterviews.com:  How do you predict that the Made in America movement will evolve over the next 5 years?

Marvin:  We’re already are starting to see a huge surge in interest in the buy-American movement that will only continue to grow. I think people will start focusing in on their local and state makers/manufacturers more as the popularity of American-made increases and the “maker movement” takes off. American Certified is accounting for all these changes with its expanding product selection and subcategories.