The real goal has always been to make things that are long lasting while making life better. Isn't that the whole point? Leave the world better than you found it, empty the dishwasher for the next guy, wipe the seat after you use it, leave the loaner with a full tank, you get it. The thinking behind LH that mostly gets yelled at friends in frustration over a pint, has been alot of “why the hell is nothing made here?”, “why are there vacant spaces in every small town”, “is everything disposable.” I ramble about how nothing is made "locally" anymore and quite frankly why does it matter whos hands are making it. Its important to be reminded that "handmade" is a fantastic marketing gimmick, EVERYTHING is hand made, but whats the difference between a shlub named Lucca in Massachusetts and a person is south east Asia?

So yes, why is it so impossibly hard to make things here. We are lucky that our supply chain is a few dots and not a spider web, and also pretty localized. Our FSC compliant plywood is harvested, milled, and finished up north in Quebec, and then shipped to Albany, our boxes are from chicopee, and our void fill is from springfield. Pretty damn close IMO. The benefit to all this is supporting your local little economy, the economic impact of small business is absolutely insane, every dollar spent at a small bussiness .68¢ stays local.

That being said, when our machines break, there is a 1-4 week lead time on getting a technician out here, no supply stores for electronic parts, basically, and no infrastructure for training a labor force, simply put American manufacturing is a very disjointed network. Being a new proud masshole it's exciting to see the deep roots of manufacturing in this weird state, almost all buckets are made in leominster, still lots of textile manufacturing, aerospace machining, some awful swat car mfg, leather working, and of course heavyweight hoodies. Long story short, living in america isn’t cheap, labor demands a living wage, we don't produce a ton of raw materials at this point in time and from Re*gan's era going forward we have developed a taste for cheap imported goods that undercut domestically made goods that last on average much longer. 

The naivety that tariffs are going to bring back jobs is impressively stupid. The current tariffs have generated about $165 BILLION with little talk of where that revenue will be going. Lucca House is a small American manufacturing operation, in theory these should help us. If we wanted to see real manufacturing “return”, there would be talks of tech and chip manufacturing investment, from vocational schools to incentives to open plants. There has been some investment in manufacturing in the northeast but its a bit far and few between. Which brings me to AI.

Ned Lud was a fictional character who opposed the wide embrace of technology. I am no luddite but hopefully we can agree that blindly using chat gpt is a race to the bottom for bad information and generic decisions. Its a tool, no different than a moulding plane is to a router, as is google to machine learning. (the moulding plane is one of the few woodworking tools that has almost been completely replaced by its motorized counterpart). Ai is here to stay but asking it to do all your copywriting just makes you look like an asshole.

So here's the marketing pitch, we are making a straight forward product in the heart of the Berkshires, and want to stick to our guns. We are not a heritage brand but are trying to pretend we are. I have always admired matthews c-stands made in Burbank, CA, its a product whose design hasn’t changed because its works. We didn't invent the slot joint we use, IK*A even made some storage units that look pretty similar to ours, but we are offering a truly modular system, that can accommodate any space. We are rolling out slowly 6/7’ sections which will make about 45 different configurations, offered in 4 colors and tops it swill bump us to over 200 SKU’s. So yup, were staying in our lane and stepping on the gas. 

Thank you and as always, 

-Lets play house.