Contractor Vince Kimbel wants you to buy American—so he’s making it easy, much unlike his experience.
The Louisville, Ky.-based custom builder is on a mission to lower the barriers for builders, remodelers, and architects to buy and specify American-made building products through co-founded platform American Grade.
In 2013, Kimbel, alongside a supportive client, tasked himself with constructing a 100% made in America home. It took an extra 700 hours of research, and he barely broke 90%. But in the end, he calculated that $300,000 worth of imported products were converted to American products.
“When you consider that most homes are already 50% American without really doing anything out of the norm, we made a tremendous impact,” says Kimbel. “Imagine if every builder and remodeler changed 5-20% of their building products to American products. If you multiply that out by the amount of homes we build in this country, my gosh, we’d solve the national debt.”