John Humphrey launched a new furniture company, Greycork, with two friends last fall. Sleek coffee tables and chairs with a mid-century modern vibe. The pieces were made in Somerset, and priced between $550 and $950. And the company generated good buzz.

Looking back, “we learned a lot,” says Humphrey, whose family has been in the lumber and millwork business in New England since the 1880s. “Seven hundred bucks was a little expensive. People were saying, ‘We love what you’re doing with the brand, but the price point doesn’t work within my budget.’”

Like every entrepreneur, Humphrey and his Greycork co-founders made a set of decisions about where to manufacture their product — decisions that have an impact on price, turnaround time, quality, brand image, and ultimately, shoppers’ willingness to open their wallets.

Many of the dynamics that influence those decisions are changing. The cost of making things in low-cost countries like China and India are rising. The risks of having products copied and sold as knock-offs by overseas factories remain a concern. And keeping production closer to home can make it easier to update and change products in a trend-obsessed market.

There’s a growing movement, born in Boston in 2012, to shine a spotlight on companies that make stuff in the United States. The American Field expo, taking place this weekend in South Boston, has spread to Atlanta, New York, and Washington. Organizers expect about 80 made-in-America companies to exhibit at the 2015 Boston edition, up from 30 in the first year.

Somerville-based Formlabs makes one of the most sophisticated 3-D printers in the world; designers use it to create working prototypes made of a hardened resin.

“We didn’t set out to manufacture in the US [just] because it’s the US,” chief executive Max Lobovsky explains. But easy communication was important to the startup — “culture, not just language,” Lobovsky says — as was the six-hour flight from Boston to San Diego, where it is made by a contract manufacturer. (Compare that to 20-plus hours to fly to Shenzhen, China, a hub for electronics manufacturing.)

But another technology executive, Steve Chambers of the robotics company Jibo, says he evaluated nine contract manufacturing firms and spoke to a handful of consultancies in trying to figure out where the company should make its product. He found that Mexico was about 1.75 times the cost of China, and the United States was 2.25 times. Chambers says that US manufacturers argued that, “We may be more costly, but your team will be closer during the prototype phases,” and shipping to customers would be cheaper.

“That’s true,” says Chambers, “but nowhere near a gap-closer.”

Jibo plans to sell a kind of robotic concierge for the home, which can manage schedules and facilitate videoconferences, aiming for a retail price around $750. Chambers says that a price twice that “was untenable.” The company chose China, as did CyPhy Works, a Danvers company that plans to begin selling an easy-to-fly drone next year.

CyPhy spokesman Kevin Phelan says that the company feels $500 is an important psychological threshold for consumers who are purchasing a gadget, rather than something essential. (Other CyPhy Works products — pricier unmanned aircraft sold to police and the military — are made in the United States.)

Even entrepreneurs who choose to make products in the United States say it can require more work on their part. David Laituri runs a Wayland company called Onehundred, which designs products like knives and birdhouses that are made within 100 miles of its office. Unlike the site Alibaba, which provides a Google-like index of contract manufacturers all around Asia, Laituri says that there is nothing comparable for American producers. (Sites like Maker’s Row and MFG.com are trying to compete.)

“The shops we work with do no marketing at all,” says Laituri. “They seem to ride on repeat business or whatever walks through the door.” He says it is “very different from the eagerness in China to land your business.” Onehundred’s latest product, a $65 utility knife, is made by R. Murphy Knives, an Ayer company founded in 1850.

Ministry of Supply co-founder Aman Advani says that the Boston apparel maker produced all of its men’s clothing in the United States through 2013 — and may make products here again in the future. But when Advani asked US factories to invest in new equipment that Ministry needed to make its apparel, “they said, ‘We’d be happy to consider using it if you buy it and send it to us,’” while plants in China were happy to invest in new machines in order get Ministry’s business.

The company now does much of its manufacturing at a factory in Fuzhou, China.

But other makers of apparel and accessories tout that they haven’t moved production off-shore. Rancourt & Co. employs 50 people who make shoes and boots in Lewiston, Maine. “It’s becoming obvious that more and more people are willing to pay more money for goods made in the USA,” says Kyle Rancourt, vice president of sales and marketing. “On top of that, we are able to source the majority of our raw materials in the United States, which drastically reduces our freight costs.”

Mark Bollman, the founder of the American Field expo and also Boston apparel company Ball & Buck, says that when he attended industry trade shows five years ago, “one out of a thousand brands were made in the USA. Now, there are entire sections within the show, where you’ll have 20 or 30 brands all positioned together.”

“Your clothes are your billboard, the cover of your book,” says Bollman. “People want to say, ‘I’m wearing something I believe in. I know the owner of this company.’” And even though lots of electronics product are made in China, Bollman notes that Apple last year began producing small quantities of laptops at a facility in Texas.

For Greycork, the furniture maker, the response to its first three products was disappointing — “We did about $30,000 in revenue,” says Humphrey — but it didn’t cause the company to rethink where it would make its products. Humphrey says he grew up sweeping the floor and working on the assembly lines of his family’s millwork business, which makes things like doors, cabinetry, and high-end staircases.

“It would’ve been strange for me to produce stuff in Thailand or Mexico,” he says. Part of the motivation behind starting Greycork, he adds, was to help his family’s factory in Somerset bring back jobs lost in the last recession.

“It absolutely is more work” to find a production facility in this country, says Humphrey, who will be participating in the American Field show this weekend. “But there are still plenty of them, located in small towns right down the road.”

Greycork redesigned its product line, simplifying it so that the furniture could fit into a flat box, and be assembled without tools. It now offers a $125 coffee table and $180 bookshelf. On the funding site Indiegogo, shoppers have already pre-ordered nearly $140,000 worth of merchandise.

And while Humphrey hasn’t yet chosen the factory that will make the new line, he is certain of one thing: It will be in Massachusetts.