At the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit this week, Matthew Wells, President and CEO of One Region, asked U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler a question that deserves a much larger place in the national manufacturing conversation: Why is rebuilding America’s productive capacity essential to the country’s future, and how can small businesses help lead that industrial resurgence?
It was the right question, particularly coming from Northwest Indiana, one of America’s most important manufacturing regions. Wells works every day at the intersection of industrial growth, economic development, infrastructure, workforce and regional competitiveness, and his question gets at a reality that is too often overlooked when policymakers and business leaders talk about reshoring, supply-chain resilience and the future of U.S. manufacturing.
America’s industrial base is overwhelmingly made up of smaller manufacturers.
According to the National Association of Manufacturers, the United States had 239,265 manufacturing firms in 2022, and all but 4,177 employed fewer than 500 people. Nearly three-quarters had fewer than 20 employees, while 93.1% employed fewer than 100.
That changes how we should think about American manufacturing.
The industrial base is not made up primarily of the massive plants and household names that dominate headlines. It is spread across hundreds of thousands of machine shops, plastics companies, metal fabricators, specialty chemical producers, rubber manufacturers, electronics firms, wood-product companies, coatings businesses, tool-and-die shops and other specialized manufacturers operating in communities across the country.
The challenge is that much of that capability is difficult to see.
At the other end of the market sits a much smaller group of large companies with enormous purchasing power and highly sophisticated procurement organizations. Those companies know their established suppliers, their Tier 1 networks, their preferred vendors and the major players already operating inside their supply chains.
In practical terms, the 2% know the 2%.
The larger opportunity is helping the 2% discover the 98%.
A large company may know the overseas supplier currently producing a component but have no reason to know that a 60-person manufacturer in Northwest Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas or Georgia has the machinery, workforce, certifications, materials expertise and available capacity to compete for some portion of that business.
The smaller manufacturer faces the same problem from the opposite direction. It may understand its own capabilities extremely well while having almost no visibility into which American companies are buying similar products overseas, what those products are, how they are classified, where they are being sourced, who controls the purchasing decision or what would be required to enter the buyer’s procurement process.
That gap is America’s manufacturing supplier-discovery problem.
The Real Challenge Is Visibility
The United States still has a deep and diverse manufacturing base, but much of that capacity is fragmented across small and mid-sized manufacturers that are difficult for buyers to identify at scale.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Economic Census counted 286,626 manufacturing establishments across the country.
That is a massive industrial landscape, yet there is no single place where a buyer can clearly see what all of those companies are capable of producing.
A manufacturer’s website usually tells you what the company sells today. It does not necessarily tell you what the company could produce tomorrow.
That distinction matters because a product catalog may identify finished goods while saying very little about the underlying machinery, materials, tolerances, manufacturing processes, certifications, tooling, engineering support or available capacity behind those products. A company performing CNC machining, injection molding, extrusion, precision forming, coating, casting or heat treatment may possess capabilities that apply to dozens of other products that never appear on its website.
A machine shop serving one industry may be able to serve another. A plastics manufacturer producing one family of components may be able to make a related product with little or no additional capital investment. A metal fabricator may have the equipment, processes and workforce needed to manufacture something it has never sold before simply because no buyer has ever brought that opportunity to the company.
If the United States is serious about reshoring, domestic sourcing and rebuilding manufacturing supply chains, supplier discovery has to become more sophisticated than searching company names, websites and product directories.
We need to understand what manufacturers are capable of making, not only what they already make.
Matt Wells Asked the Right Question
That is why Wells’ question matters.
He did not ask only how America can attract more massive factories or secure the next billion-dollar manufacturing investment. He asked how small businesses can help lead America’s industrial resurgence.
For a smaller manufacturer, growth may come from an additional $2 million, $5 million or $10 million in annual orders. A new customer can justify another machine, another production line, another shift, a building expansion, more engineers, additional apprentices or a larger workforce.
In many cases, a manufacturer does not need an entirely new market. It needs visibility into demand that already exists.
That is why supplier discovery should be part of the reshoring conversation.
Before America assumes it lacks the capability to produce something domestically, we should first become much better at identifying the manufacturing capability we already have.
Start With Import Demand That Already Exists
But another economic opportunity is already sitting in front of us every day: the products American companies are purchasing from overseas.
The demand already exists. The buyer already exists. The transaction is already occurring.
The question is whether some portion of that import demand could be competitively served by an American manufacturer.
That is where import substitution becomes practical.
Instead of beginning with the traditional question — “What could this manufacturer potentially sell?” — we can start with something far more useful:
What are American companies already buying from overseas that this manufacturer may be capable of producing?
That changes the entire supplier-discovery process.
Who is importing the product? What exactly are they purchasing? Where is it coming from? How is it classified? What manufacturing processes are likely required? Which domestic manufacturers have similar or adjacent capabilities? What is missing between technical capability and commercial readiness? What would need to be true for the buyer to consider a U.S. supplier?
Those are actionable questions for manufacturers, procurement teams, economic-development organizations and manufacturing associations—and the foundation of a more practical import-substitution strategy.
Domestic Sourcing Has to Begin With Competition
None of this means every imported product should automatically be made in the United States.
Domestic manufacturers still have to compete.
The more useful question is whether a capable American manufacturer is even getting the opportunity to compete.
If a U.S. company is already purchasing a product overseas, and a manufacturer two states away has the equipment, process knowledge, certifications and workforce needed to produce it, there should be a practical way for those two companies to discover one another.
The domestic manufacturer should not win because of geography alone. It should still have to compete on price, quality, capacity, specifications, timing, reliability and risk.
But there is a meaningful difference between losing a competitive sourcing decision and never being discovered in the first place.
That difference is where better market intelligence can matter.
From Manufacturer Directories to Capability Intelligence
This is also why the next generation of supplier discovery cannot simply be another manufacturer directory.
Directories are useful, but most are built around what companies already make.
A true domestic supplier-discovery system should understand capability.
If a manufacturer performs injection molding, CNC machining, precision forming, extrusion, casting, coating, fabrication or heat treatment, that information should help identify products the company may be capable of manufacturing, even when those exact products do not currently appear in its catalog.
Then that manufacturing capability can be compared against actual market demand.
That is the problem Reshore Technologies is being built to address: connecting import data, buyer demand, product classifications, manufacturing capabilities, tariff exposure, supplier information and geography so that manufacturers and buyers can see one another more clearly.
The National Reshoring Center approaches the same challenge from the economic-development side, helping states and communities identify where import demand may overlap with domestic manufacturing capability and then organize the partnerships needed to act on those opportunities.
The formula is straightforward:
Demand intelligence + manufacturing capability = better supplier discovery.
That does not guarantee a reshored contract. It creates a better opportunity for one.
Manufacturing Growth Is a Network
Large manufacturing investments do not exist in isolation.
A semiconductor facility, automotive plant, steel mill, aerospace operation, chemical facility, battery factory or data center creates demand across an entire network of suppliers.
The industrial resurgence America wants is ultimately a supply-chain story, and supply chains are networks.
The opportunity is to make sure small and mid-sized American manufacturers are visible inside those networks.
Supplier Discovery as Economic Development
This is where supplier discovery becomes much more than a procurement function.
It can also become an economic-development strategy.
Organizations such as One Region are working every day to strengthen regional economies by attracting investment, developing talent, improving infrastructure and supporting industrial growth. Those efforts matter, but there is another economic-development lever available:
Help the manufacturers already operating in the region win more business.
According to the National Association of Manufacturers, every $1 spent in manufacturing generates $2.69 in total economic impact across the U.S. economy once indirect and induced effects are included.
A new order can create demand for raw materials, trucking, engineering, maintenance, equipment and construction. It can support another production shift, additional apprenticeships, more hiring and future capital investment.
For a very large company, a $5 million sourcing decision may represent only a small fraction of its procurement budget.
For a 75-person manufacturer, that same $5 million contract can materially change the trajectory of the business.
That is the power hidden inside the 98%.
The 98% Need a Better Front Door
Matthew Wells began with a question about how small businesses can help lead America’s industrial resurgence.
Part of the answer may be giving them a better front door into the market.
What has largely been missing is the connective tissue between them.
America will continue to import, and it should. Global trade will remain part of how companies source materials, technologies, components, equipment and finished products.
The opportunity is not to eliminate imports.
It is to understand import demand well enough that, when an American manufacturer is capable of competing for that business, it actually has a chance to be discovered.
Before we conclude that America cannot make something, we should first become much better at finding out who already might.
The 2% already know the 2%.
The real opportunity is helping them discover the 98%.
That is where supplier discovery becomes import substitution, import substitution becomes a purchase order, and a purchase order can become new investment, new jobs and new manufacturing growth in communities across America.