How 13 Brands Are Dealing With Tariffs (in Real Time)
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President Trump’s tariffs (which range from a minimum 10 percent, to, as of a mere hour ago, as high as 125 percent) hit this week. As my colleagueMichael Zhaoreported, this means theprices of goodsare likely to increase across the board, from already-big investments like cars to smaller everyday products likeface washand laundry detergent.
I reached out to dozens of brands of different sizes across categories to get a sense of what they are thinking and planning in the wake of this news. While many said it was too early to make adefinitive statement, quite a few were willing and eager to talk. Below, you’ll hear from the founders and CEOs of Made In, Misen, Zwilling (which owns Staub), Morrow Soft Goods, Weezie, Dieux, Petite Studio, Labucq, Havenly (which owns such brands as Interior Define and the Citizenry), Golde, The Bouqs Co., and Dusen Dusen.
All maintained that there’s a lot to be determined, and it seems to me that most are trying to proceed with caution (who knows if and how things will change yet again in the coming weeks and months). Still, they need to act pragmatically about their new reality. Taking 100 percent of the hit themselves is simply impossible if they hope to survive this. Below, I break down what these companies are being forced to consider, and in turn, what you might expect as a consumer.
[Editor’s note: Just before publication of this story, the White House announced a 90-day halt of reciprocal tariffs, capping them at 10 percent across the board. The exception is China, which will be hit with an increase in tariffs of up to 125 percent.]
In the vast majority of cases, moving manufacturing to the United States is not a viable option. A big part of this is our lack of infrastructure and raw materials.
Stephanie Cleary,Morrow Soft Goodsco-founder: Most of our bedding is done in Portugal and then our more novelty handwoven items are done in India. My background is in apparel, so I used to do manufacturing in America. I thought we could do [bedding] here, but we can’t. We don’t have the infrastructure. We don’t have the factories. A lot of these machines need to be at least 140 inches wide to do weaving. The cutting tables [in Portugal] are way bigger. The washing machines, the laundries — all of that is different.
Charlotte Palermino,Dieuxco-founder: Because we launched in 2020 we attempted to source everything locally but quickly learned that’s not how any industry works. What’s misunderstood is a lot of the manufacturing for beauty never existed here. Particularly skincare. There’s nowhere to source the materials, packaging, or raw ingredients from so it’s not an option. This isn’t car manufacturing.
Lauren Bucquet,Labucqfounder and designer: We’ve been working with the same factories in Tuscany and some in the Marche area since we launched. It’s basically a little nexus of vendors and manufacturers that are all in this one area — a pretty simple supply chain actually. Really the issue is that there isn’t the infrastructure to make shoes in the U.S. There’s some great shoemaking for men’s boots, like Red Wing for example. It’s like a billion dollar brand. They’re making hundreds of thousands of shoes. But for a small company like us, there just aren’t manufacturers. And it’s not even just the factory. We’ve also looked into setting up our own, but the leather that’s made here is more for furniture — like super heavy-duty, durable cow leathers. The lamb and sheep raw materials mostly come from Europe or Eastern Europe. They’re not coming from the U.S. It just doesn’t exist.
Allison Levy,Hikerkindco-founder: When we first launched, we were manufacturing in New York City, but there was one factory that had the capabilities to do seam sealing and bonding and even flat lock seaming, which is specifically for performance apparel. That was one of the reasons we wanted to outsource — because we knew that we would have the machinery and skill set overseas that we don’t have access to in New York. I think what they should have done is created incentives for companies to start producing their goods in the U.S. because then maybe people would be motivated to do it.
Ellen Van Dusen,Dusen Dusenfounder and designer: Most of our textiles are made in Portugal, most of our hard goods are made in China, and then a lot of our kitchen items are made in India. We work with a country based on their manufacturing capabilities — who’s the best at it? I started as a clothing line 15 years ago, and I was doing all my production in Manhattan because that industry is here. It’s expensive, but it is manageable to make clothes in America. But these other products that we make? It just completely doesn’t exist. You cannot make printed bedding in the U.S. You just can’t.
Kim Tobman,The Bouqs Co.CEO: We get flowers from all over the world, but Ecuador and Colombia are our biggest sources (as is the case with the whole flower industry). While we also source from the U.S., many farms and growers are getting materials from outside of the US. Boxes come from Colombia, Ecuador, and other Asian countries. Vases are the same. Since tariffs have been a looming threat for some time, we’ve been working through various sourcing options. Based on the rate of the current tariffs, we may be adjusting to countries where the costs aren’t as good, but the tariffs are now lower. Flower quality is subject to climate and certain soil conditions. As we know with peonies, we must follow them where they’re best grown throughout the year. We can’t force production domestically.
Trinity Mouzon Wofford,Goldefounder: We manufacture and source most of our packaging in the United States, but many of our superfood ingredients are grown and processed abroad in countries like Japan, India, and China. I personally am an advocate of producing more domestically (ideally, locally!), but this tariff process has really exposed the reality of our global economy. Our industries have evolved under the assumption that parts, ingredients, and manufacturers can leverage the ability to access anything from anywhere. Without first making investments in domestic manufacturing capabilities, it will be the American business and consumers who are hard hit by these policies.
We also lack skillsets and expertise.
Cleary, Morrow Soft Goods:We don’t have the knowledge in America. It takes eight hours to hook up the yarns alone. So it’s mostly a whole bunch of grandmas that sit there and tie them all up to the machines. They also have the expertise to do it.
Joanna Rosenberg,Zwillingchief sales and marketing officer: Staub is cast iron that is enamel-coated. There is cast iron production in the United States — for example, Lodge — but not anything with any volume to it. It takes tremendous skill to be able to execute on those kinds of colors and at the quality levels where you don’t get any chipping or cracking. There are people who work in our factory in France that have been there for generations. Their father did the job. Now, they do the job. There’s an enormous amount of institutional knowledge.
Bucquet, Labucq: Setting up a factory is one thing, but actually being able to make the product beautiful is another. It would take an incredible amount of money and investment and people and time.
Lee Mayer,Havenlyco-founder and CEO: Over the last 40 years, we’ve become a service economy, and so upholsterers are in really short supply here. That was actually a problem in 2021. We saw it just a couple of years ago because everyone tried to see if they could get stuff made domestically because it was so much quicker. And you saw there wasn’t skilled labor around upholstery.
And labor is also an issue.
Chip Malt,Made InCEO: We manufacture in the U.S. for a certain portion of our business and then Europe and the U.K. for others. As of right now, we have outgrown and tapped our entire U.S. manufacturing. So we’re actually going down to our manufacturer on Monday to talk about millions and millions of dollars of more investments to continue to scale. But labor will be a big question mark in this whole thing — like, do Americans want to work in a steel factory?
Bucquet, Labucq: We did do some calculations about whether or not it would make sense for us to be importing raw materials into the U.S. and then finishing the shoes here. We would pay less in taxes and tariffs. But then labor costs in the U.S. are actually pretty comparable to what you pay in Italy. So I don’t know if you’re really saving much. If you could set up that sort of finishing facility or something, maybe it would be cost-effective at scale, but we’re a pretty small company. For us to invest, or to find a contractor who could actually finish the shoes like that, is more than we can take on right now.
Companies are more likely to shift production to other countries than they are to bring it to America — or to look for ways to lower costs in the countries where they’re already set up.
Lindsey Johnson,Weezieco-founder and CEO: We will have to counter-source to countries that have lower tariffs. We’ve successfully done some of that work already, but we have to make sure we’re controlling for the same exact quality of product that we sell today. And there are other components when you’re shifting manufacturers, like freight costs; it’s not just trying to optimize the tariff rates.
Mayer, Havenly:We’ve known that China would get hit hard. So we moved a lot of production over the last four or five months out of China and into Cambodia. We did not expect Vietnam and Cambodia to be hit with such high tariffs. At least in the furniture space, you’re getting your highest quality products from China. And it’s because they’re incredibly efficient, very innovative, willing to meet us halfway. There’s a lot more automation in China. I worry that we’re getting to a place where pretty much everyone’s still thinking about how to just lower costs in Asia.
Levy, Hikerkind:When we first started hearing rumors about tariffs, we were like,We need to diversify our factories, so all of our eggs aren’t in one basket.For 2026, we’ve already started the onboarding process for shifting manufacturing to Vietnam and Lithuania and other countries. It’s not really avoiding the tariffs like we thought we could, but I think diversifying and having multiple factories is going to allow us to be able to make decisions accordingly. What we’re discussing now as a team is, do we shift all of our manufacturing to the E.U. or South America or another country that isn’t as impacted by the tariffs? And then just import the raw goods, like the materials and trims, from Asia to those countries? And then import the finished goods to the States?
In the worst-case scenario, the tariffs are more likely to cause job loss than job creation in the United States.
Rosenberg, Zwilling: We employ more people in the United States than we do in France. We employ more people in the United States than we do in Germany. When there’s a negative impact to business, we feel the pain as much — or even more — here. I don’t want to give anybody the idea that we’re doing any sort of cutbacks, because at this point we’re not. We don’t have any plans for that. But if all of a sudden this really tanks buying behaviors, it will significantly impact our company in the United States as much, if not more, than in other countries.
Mayer, Havenly: I do have some employees that are in Asia but all of my highly paid employees are here. So if we do — and we have no plans to do it right now — but if we do cut, or anyone in the furniture industry is cutting, they’re cutting here in America. And it just seems extremely weird to be cutting jobs that are averaging out at $100,000 a year to go to a $25-an-hour floor worker.
One possible outcome is that quality could go down across the board over time.
Van Dusen, Dusen Dusen: I worry that over the next couple of years, the quality of a lot of products on the market is going to go down. Not with our brand, because we’re smaller and a little more nimble. We don’t have a big boy telling us what to do. But all these companies are going to be sourcing new manufacturing, working with partners that they’ve never worked with before, that have never made these specific products before. The cost of materials is going to have to be cheaper to accommodate the tariffs. So I just think if the tariffs stick, the quality of everything is going to get worse.
Price increases are inevitable.
Malt, Made In: In the grand scheme of things, we’re taking a 25 percent hit. The consumer is taking on the lowest portion of that, Made In is taking the largest, and we’re expecting our manufacturers to take a small portion, too. It’s not just like, wham, bury the consumer. If we did that, our product would go up to astronomical amounts. To keep ourselves margin whole, a $169 pan would have to go to around $229. But that $169 pan is going to $179 in most cases. There’s a vast gap in that jump. So then that delta is where we also have to make it up from a business perspective, or just eat it.
Rosenberg, Zwilling: I talked quite a bit with the retailers, and it seems like, across the board, everybody is doing price increases. They’re going to go into effect sometime between May 1 and July 1 or 15. Ours are going into effect June 1. There’s just no way around it. I talked to Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, Crate & Barrel, Amazon, Costco, and everyone’s doing price increases. There is not an exception that I’ve heard of.
Johnson, Weezie: We won’t just take a percent increase across the board; it will be dependent on where the goods are manufactured, what we think our customer is willing to pay, and also what our supplier is willing to meet us in the middle on.
Mayer, Havenly: Interior Define is a unique brand. It’s our largest brand. It’s a custom business, so we take the customer’s orders and then stuff comes into the country. In February and March we took customer orders and I’m going to be paying tariffs or taxes on them. We’re just going to have to absorb it and that really sucks. On Friday, we added an import fee at checkout. It’s very clear what it is. And it’s not the total amount of tariff — it’s actually a very small amount of what we’re getting charged. The way we’re calculating it right now is at 7.5 percent of your total, but it’s capped at $250. We’re working on the price increase across the other brands. We expect anywhere from 6 to 7 percent on average, maybe a little bit higher. With these brands, we have three months of inventory, so we’ve got a couple of months to be able to figure this out. That being said, we’re probably going to start stepping into it pretty quickly here just to make sure we don’t get into a position where we have to place a product order and we have it accounted for like we did with Interior Define.
Mouzon Wofford, Golde:I imagine we will soon see increased prices from many of our American vendors as their own costs for parts and raw materials increase. It will be extremely difficult for any American business to avoid dramatically increased costs, even if they are largely sourcing and manufacturing domestically. We will definitely have to increase prices if we see our costs going up, unfortunately. Our business is not set up to absorb massive increases in costs of goods. We haven’t made any price adjustments yet.
Levy, Hikerkind: Like everyone else, we will most likely have to increase prices. It’s a matter of how much and which pieces. Obviously, stuff that’s being manufactured in the E.U. won’t be hit as hard as something that’s being manufactured in Vietnam, so the price won’t be as impacted as much.
Van Dusen, Dusen Dusen: We are raising them to a point that feels still-manageable. But we’re taking a pretty significant hit on our margins, even with the price raise. For me, it’s really important to be accessible. We’re just trying to assess the line of how we can get close to maintaining our original margins while raising the prices a little bit.
Bucquet, Labucq: We are planning to do a full across-the-board price raise. We actually announced that and we’re going to raise the full 20 percent. We’re going to do it in two increments: 10 percent on April 15, and then another ten in May. For us, it makes more sense to do a full-margin increase across the board. We cannot survive if we don’t pass this on down the line. Our margins are, as it is, before increasing, quite tight. I think it will affect sales, but not in a way that’s crippling. We have a lot of returning customers who love our product, and that gives us confidence to go ahead and do this. We did an announcement on Instagram and we also sent an email to all of our customers, and the response was pretty overwhelmingly supportive.
Some companies aren’t ready to say exactly how they’ll make moves. They’re proceeding with caution and seeing how the dust settles, at least over the next couple of weeks.
Michael Mahoney,MisenCEO: I will say this: We’re not doing anything immediately because we don’t have to. Misen has no debt. We are profitable every single month and we are growing. I think anytime in business that you freak out and run in a different direction, you’re going to trip, you’re going to hurt yourself. I’m not saying we’re going to hold out to the last minute, but we’re going to make an appropriate decision.
Matt Howell,Petite Studioco-founder: We just highlighted every new incoming item or restock item, and we looked at how much stock we actually have. I think our prices are kind of going to be all over the place. So some items that we already have a stock in, we’re not changing those. But some of the new items, we will.
Palermino, Dieux: We are trying not to raise prices, but we do promise to be transparent if we have to. We’ve always been price transparent so this is an easier conversation for us to have because we can show you the receipts and math. I’ve never been so grateful to have a low SKU count. Most brands that are four years old have more than six formulas. I truly feel for anyone in color cosmetics or that has a lot of products as the logistics to make changes are tenfold of what we would have to do.
But for most, calculating how much to increase prices isn’t quite so simple.
Malt, Made In: You don’t price products necessarily on a cost-plus model. You price them based on what customers are willing to pay. So we have a general margin profile we have to work underneath and it’s not like every single item is going up by the same amount. There are certain items that are sitting at $99 that we don’t think anyone will want to pay $109 for. So we’re not adding a single price increase on that. But we have products that are sitting at $139 that no one would bat an eye at going to $149.
Rosenberg, Zwilling:At Williams Sonoma, If a price goes from $400 to $449, maybe they were going to sell 100 units, and now they’ll sell 97, right? That means there’s not a lot of price elasticity. But when you get down to more of a value consumer who’s buying our Henckels brand, and the product used to be $49 for a chef’s knife, and now it needs to be $59 for a chef’s knife, all of a sudden, instead of selling 100, maybe you’re selling 60. We might have something in Staub that we sell for $199, and we just know that breaking that price point is going to be really meaningful to the consumers, and we’ll sell meaningfully less units. And so we try as best as we can to protect those. And where we think the customer is more fluid, we kind of raise an imbalance to try to protect the consumer’s sense of value.
Howell, Petite Studio: I think the reality of women’s apparel is that if you want to push prices, you have to be giving more. We’ve already been in a push over the past 18 months to go to more natural fabrics, and that comes with higher prices. It costs us more, but we can charge more for it. I think if we push prices, we really have to be showing that we’re giving something to the customer.
Mayer, Havenly: Particularly for smaller ticket items, people are willing to pay 20%, 30%, 40% more on something that’s not very expensive. It’s a little less likely on a sofa that you’d be willing to go from $3,000 to $10,000.
Even American-manufactured products will likely get more expensive.
Malt, Made In: The other interesting trend we’re hearing is that people who purely manufacture in the U.S. — they’re going to raise prices too because all their competitors are and it gives them more of a margin play.
Tobman, The Bouqs Co.: Many of the flowers grown in the U.S. require plant material (bulbs and seeds, for example) from countries experiencing some of the highest tariffs. So we expect some of our U.S. suppliers and U.S.-grown products to be affected significantly.
Companies that don’t pass along the full amount to their customers will likely be forced to make other changes.
Cleary, Morrow Soft Goods: We’ve designed our entire fall collection and have already almost finalized our spring ’26 collection. As a small business, we just have to think ahead. We’re ready to finally buy the items that we’ve designed and created — but we’re now having to pick and choose and break that collection apart. There were a few new colors that we were introducing. We just X’d them all out. Which sucks because we’re not able to deliver the collection the way that we want to.
Howell, Petite Studio:To be honest, I think all of our heads are still kind of spinning and we’re just trying to make sense of what this all means. We are already a very specialized niche brand, but becoming even more specialized, finding ways to do maybe more limited-run capsule collections, smaller-run stuff that’s a little bit more special feeling, maybe comes with the premium pricing but is lower volume. I think that’s definitely something we’re thinking about.
Now is a good time to buy if you’ve been eyeing something. But also don’t go crazy.
Malt, Made In: For us, I think it’ll be unnoticeable if you buy now versus a couple of weeks. We’re trying to take it slow and easy. I just think too much of the marketing world these days is fearmongering time pressures and we’re trying to be a little bit more consumer-friendly on that front. But it’s only going to get worse.
Mahoney, Misen: I would say you cannot time the market. And I tell our team all the time that we need to act like firefighters. When something bad happens, you walk, you don’t run, and you act with purpose. And I think consumers should act the same way. So I would encourage everybody: If you need a thing, buy the thing.
Rosenberg, Zwilling:My one advice to anybody who’s shopping is buy everything before May 1.
Palermino, Dieux: K-beauty is going to skyrocket in price if this continues. Other than that I’m not sure it’s a good idea to stockpile anything. International sunscreen is another thing that is becoming hard to get due toMoCRA enforcementand now the ending of de minimis will make buying from Korean retailers exorbitant.
Mayer, Havenly: If you’re thinking about price and price alone, it’s a good time to buy. Most retailers in furniture or apparel have a couple of months of inventory on hand. They’re going to probably start increasing prices in the next couple of weeks, as this settles out. I know I just placed a couple orders —AirPods, and I needed aVitamix. I was like,Let me just get it. I’ll just get it.
Levy, Hikerkind: We’re not trying to be like, “Fire sale, buy right now” because I think that that’s a panic reaction. I think buy what you need, don’t buy what you don’t. The same way that brands are kind of waiting for the dust to settle to see how this has long-term impacts on overall pricing structure, the customer should maybe wait to see as well.
Mouzon Wofford, Golde:I think now is a good time for folks to buy the things they need, even if they’re made in the USA. I think everything is about to get more expensive.
The long term is quite unclear.
Malt, Made In:Most people I’m talking to, and ourselves, as well — we don’t want to just continually raise the prices on consumers over time. So I think you’re going to see the immediate spike, some response in the next 30 to 60 days from most brands. And then quiet time for three months. And then okay, let’s look at our actual financial P&L. Are we getting screwed? Revisit. Hopefully we don’t have to raise prices again.
Cleary, Morrow Soft Goods: I think for us right now, we’re going to give a heads-up to our dropship and our wholesale client customers. But we’re also just trying to take it honestly week by week and see how it goes. I think that there’s so much uncertainty, we can’t really plan the way that we used to anymore.
Mayer, Havenly: I’m old enough to have lived through a couple of shocks like this. Some have corrected pretty quickly, like 2020. I was in business school in 2008, so I remember that one. Watching the markets over the last couple of days, I’ve been pretty concerned about it. Look, the consumer has been willing to swallow pretty high levels of inflation and still maintain spending over the last few years. Will this tip them over the edge? It’s unclear. I think if somehow businesses continue to invest and people don’t lose their jobs, I think we could maybe make it okay. But I’m worried.
Tobman, The Bouqs Co.: The longer term feels like staring into an abyss for this topic. If you look at the tariff plans for Canada and Mexico alone for the past 2.5 months, they have changed dramaticallymanytimes. The hope would be, that if this is a bold negotiation tactic, there will be stabilization in the future — on both the costs, and the macro impact that this may have on customer spending habits. But it feels like the only certain thing right now is uncertainty.
Palermino, Dieux: Ever since 2016 I’ve stepped out of the prediction game.
In a glass-half-full view, these changes might prompt people to shop more intentionally.
Mahoney, Misen: Should you expect prices to go up across the board some amount? Yeah. But that really just means you need fewer things. You need better, cheaper things. Great. We’re going to win. That’s awesome. I don’t think most people should need a set of five, 15, 25 pots and pans. That’s insane. They should have a couple things that work that are great and last forever.
Bucquet, Labucq: Personally, I’ve always advocated for quality, longevity, and mindful consumption — buying carefully, investing in products that last, and maintaining them over time. The recentStrategist storyhighlighting Jo Rosenthal’s five-year-old boots is a testament to this commitment. Perhaps the silver lining in this challenging moment is an opportunity for all of us to embrace thoughtful consumption: purchasing fewer but better items, and caring for them thoughtfully. To shop with intention and commitment. Let’s hope the era of the cobbler has truly returned.
More on Tariffs
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- What Does the End of De Minimis Mean for Online Shopping?
- Our Top-Pick Anker Charger Is Already Up $10
- Silk Is About to Get Harder to Find. Here’s What to Get Now.
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