Advantages for companies and their products:
The Made-in-D certification provides companies with a powerful tool to distinguish their products through a clear commitment to ethical sourcing. This self-managed certification process is simple, cost-effective, and requires minimal time for most products.
Brand Value: Certification signals a proactive stance against supporting supply chains in dictatorships, where unchecked authority often leads to systemic human rights abuses, exploitative labor conditions, and opaque, high-risk supply chains.
Consumer Appeal: Certified products resonate with consumers who prioritize ethical production and social responsibility, offering a compelling reason to choose these products over less transparent alternatives.
Cost-Efficiency: The streamlined, self-certification process eliminates the need for extensive supplier collaboration, saving time and costs compared to traditional certifications.
Employee Engagement: Demonstrating a commitment to democratic principles can enhance morale and pride within the workforce, reinforcing positive perceptions of the company’s values.
Together, these benefits foster stronger consumer trust, brand loyalty, and long-term competitive advantage. Through certification consumers can choose between two similar products, differentiating them for their non-autocratic supply chains.
Marketing is key to acceptance, especially to a younger generation (via sports, music etc.).
•Getting leading manufacturing countries to participate and major companies of consumer brands to join in self-certification.
•Convincing democratic governments to encourage this effort and to require that their own principal products be Made-in-D.•Getting consumers aware of the Made-in-D label and its importance.
•Important funds are needed to engage, lobby and advertise with the most efficient team in a worldwide effort, but with a local touch.
•Effort must be sustained over long time horizons, several years will be needed until the brand Made-in-D is a household label that is commonly recognized.
•Dictatorships will certainly try to undermine effort (trolling, hacking) and Made-in-D must be robust enough to sustain efforts.
“D” needs to become a requested “brand”
Ideally, in the future this could become an important consideration for deciding where to invest!
•Today most investments of where to produce are made with almost exclusively economic factors in mind.
•Considerations are on the order of; which markets are interesting to sell to and which countries have lowest costs?
•Rarely are considerations of the ethics of the country considered.
•Made-in-D is a way to encourage companies to consider democratic values when choosing next investment locations.
•Often there is little external incentive to remain democratic as a country and this is seen in degradations of democracies worldwide. Made-in-D would thus create an important incentive to remain or to become more democratic.