Trae (Trey) Stephens

I have an aunt that works in eyeglass manufacturing.

And I started kind of searching around when I was sitting there with my mom.

And every single one of these factories

is no longer there.

Like our industrial capacity that was kind of the heart of, you know, Ohio's economy for so long completely collapsed.

And that was the story of my family.

I mean, that was it.

And so more than just like coming back and being like, hey, mom, look, I'm doing this cool thing and we're doing it in Ohio.

It's really about

Like, reinvigorating this family story.

Like, we need to bring production back to America.

And it's very cool to be part of bringing that back to my family story in addition to just doing it at a more macro level.

Yeah, I mean, all this sort of started falling apart, I guess, when I was in high school, which was like 20 years ago.

You know, all the steel production left Ohio.

There were huge steel companies in Ohio.

Armco was, I think, the biggest employer in Middletown, where JD is from.

And, you know, none of that is there anymore.

My uncle worked at Mound Steel, which was another big steel producer in southwest Ohio.

It's no longer there.

So I think there's definitely still skilled labor around.