Diamond Tours Bus Group from America's Heartland is set to be the 800th bus to visit the Made in America flagship store in Elma.
At 11 a.m. Tuesday, Made in America Store will welcome the 800th tour bus to visit since it first opened in 2010. The celebration takes place within sight of General Welding & Fabricating, where the story began.
Founder Mark Andol opened the store "for country, for soldier, for American worker," he said. Tourists visiting the Made in America Store marvel at the founder's "lemons to lemonade" story following the loss of 50 percent of his business to China.
Tour Bus No. 800, operated by Phoenix Bus Inc., will bring a senior group from Carroll County, Illinois, right on the border of Iowa. For the Made in America Store, America's Heartland has been the largest source of tour bus groups, hosting guests from Minnesota to Oklahoma. Diamond Tours included a stop at Made in America Store for this bus group heading home from a memorable trip to Nova Scotia, Canada.
"I'm so grateful," said Andol, CEO of the only department store and distribution center in the U.S. to sell only 100 percent American-made products. "Never did I, just a small-town-welder-turned-steel-products-manufacturer, imagine that so many tour buses would come to my store in Western New York. We are booking well into 2019 already."
Through the Made in America Store world distribution center, the company wholesales products to other retailers - a total of eight different retailers across the U.S. This leg of the business offers growth potential, given the increasing demand for American-made products nationwide and the absence of these products on most store shelves. The Made in America Store now carries more than 8,500 products, supporting 500-plus "makers."
"Virtually every bus has passengers on board asking us to open a store where they live. That's the reason we started the 'store-in-store' option, so that retailers can start with an end cap or other modest display and increase the number of American products they sell as word gets out and demand fuels their growth," Andol said.
