• FR

    • Well Made Here Turns Eight: More Than 15,000 Accredited Products

    Born on Halloween night, the program is no ghost: its numbers are very real, and climbing. A look at eight years of growth, at the detailed portal to come and at the new account manager who is now your main contact.

    On October 31, 2018, at AQMAT’s initiative, hardware banners and professional associations founded Bien fait ici / Well Made Here, a federally chartered not-for-profit organization. Its mission fits in one sentence: to encourage the purchase of hardware products and building materials made in Canada that meet national construction standards. Eight years later to the day, the program is more popular than ever.

    Eight years on: the big numbers

    We estimate that more than 15,000 products are now accredited under Well Made Here. Here is where the program stands on its eighth anniversary:

    • More than 15,000 accredited products
    • Approximately 250 participating manufacturing companies
    • Nearly 300 facilities, spread across eight Canadian provinces
    • About 80% of these companies are Canadian-owned; about 20% are subsidiaries of foreign companies that have chosen to manufacture here

    Behind each of these numbers are plants that keep running, jobs here at home and a logo that consumers increasingly recognize in stores, in flyers and online.

    Modest beginnings

    The distance travelled is the measure of the success. At the end of the program’s first year, about 100 manufacturers were taking part. Today we count approximately 250, two and a half times as many.

    Launched by a Quebec association, the program set its sights on the whole country from day one: a federally chartered organization, a bilingual logo and, among its founders, banners present from coast to coast. The logo first appeared in stores in the spring of 2019, when five million leaflets were distributed in some 2,400 hardware stores and home improvement centres of ten banners. It is now visible from coast to coast. The promise has not changed: quality housing, from the cellar to the attic.

    A favourable climate

    The reasons for this growing popularity will come as no surprise. Tariffs and counter-tariffs are encouraging Canadians to choose domestic products, and consumer interest in buying local keeps growing. Surveys confirm it. So do retailers, who are increasingly asked where their products come from, a reflex previously seen only in grocery stores.

    In a home improvement centre, the question “where is it made?” now comes up for a garage door, an electrical box or a drainage pipe just as it used to for strawberries and tomatoes. That is exactly the reflex the program set out to create eight years ago.

    “We started with an idea, a logo and about a hundred committed manufacturers. Today, more than 15,000 products carry that logo from coast to coast, and customers ask where their windows come from the way they ask where their tomatoes come from. The next challenge is to be able to find, in a few clicks, everything that is accredited.”

    — Richard Darveau, President and Founder of Well Made Here

    The next project: a detailed portal of accredited products

    Success creates a new expectation: knowing precisely which products are accredited. Housing professionals — architects, designers, renovation and construction contractors — want to check before specifying a product. Merchants are receiving more and more such requests from their customers. And homeowners want to make an informed choice before they even set foot in a store.

    Well Made Here will therefore build a detailed public web portal. Visitors will be able to search by department, as in a home improvement centre (electrical, plumbing, paint, etc.), by manufacturer and by province of manufacture. Each product will have its own listing: brand, model, universal product code (UPC), short description, image, and links to the manufacturer’s website and videos.

    Over the coming weeks, we will ask every participating company to sign on to the project; construction of the portal will begin in 2027. With approximately 250 companies, nearly 300 facilities and more than 15,000 products to catalogue, it is a major undertaking. It is also the logical next step after eight years of effort: making visible, product by product, what the logo promises as a whole.

    A new point of contact: Zoé Doucette

    To lead these projects, Well Made Here welcomes Zoé Doucette as account manager. From now on, she is your main contact at the program. Fully bilingual, she will be reaching out to every participating company over the coming weeks to update your information (contact person, Canadian plants, product lines and eligible brands), review your file and present the visibility opportunities available to you, starting with the portal.

    Don’t wait for her call to reach her:

    Thank you to our major partners and our manufacturers

    None of this would have been possible without our major partners, the banners and buying groups that display the logo in their stores, flyers and websites: AD Canada, Canac, Castle, EvoX, Home Hardware, Patrick Morin, RONA and Sexton. Their commitment gives the program its national reach and its credibility with consumers.

    Thank you as well to the approximately 250 manufacturing companies that have chosen to have their products accredited. You are the reason the program exists. Your continued support makes a real difference, and we are counting on you for the next eight years.

    And happy Halloween! If anything in this report is scary, it is how fast the numbers are climbing.