Rethinking market? Tariffs reshape buyers’ plans for shopping spring show

AT THE MARKET — President Trump’s tariff announcements earlier this month have made many retailers rethink the way they’re sourcing from vendors.

With so much uncertainty in the marketplace, Furniture Today asked retailers how the tariffs are impacting their plans for this week’s High Point Market.

Jake Jabs
American Furniture Warehouse
Englewood, Colo.

Depending on the tariff increase, we may decide not to buy the merchandise and maybe drop the factory entirely. Or we may have to increase our selling price.

Robert Van Hoose
Big Sandy Superstore
Franklin Furnace, Ohio

We always shop for the best values. Tariffs are just part of the equation. I personally think tariffs will be less than feared, and markets like clarity.

Sam Zavary
Exclusive Furniture
Houston

We are definitely not shopping anything made in China.

John Moray
Gorman’s
Farmington Hills, Mich.

Our original approach was to focus on our intro category, what we call ‘Starting Out’ or ‘Starting Over.’ It’s a highly price-sensitive category.

With the confirmed tariffs, we’re now reevaluating the brands we intended to explore at this level, as pricing may shift beyond the range this category requires. The central concern for us is how tariffs will impact the landed cost of goods and whether those increases will still allow us to meet our desired key price points.

So far, I’ve only received communication from one Canadian vendor, which is holding its current position based on its interpretation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). However, it, too, is waiting to assess the impact on its supply chain and material costs before finalizing any pricing changes. The uncertainty around vendor responses and the overall effect of tariffs has made planning more difficult.

Adding to that is a proposed docking fee on Chinese-built ships — estimated between $1.5 million to $3 million per port call — which could further escalate costs. This combination of tariffs and additional fees is creating a volatile pricing environment. All retailers will be impacted. … Our goal is to work closely with vendors to navigate this uncertainty and minimize disruption for customers as we move forward.

Lael Thompson
Home Collections Furniture
Aurora, Colo.

It doesn’t change our buying plan too much. Our strategy is: As long as the value on domestic products is balanced (bang for the buck) and prices are in the middle price point, we try to support domestic product first.

For the items we buy that are not made in the U.S., we make sure there is a plan to be a partner to each other when problems happen and share in the pain until a reasonable solution can be figured out.

I’m interested to observe the strength and quality of relationships between industry vendors and their retailers in this situation. My curiosity is: Will it come down to “me first” or will there be a “partnering on the path forward” to keep each other healthy?

This industry has always prided itself on relationships. Hopefully unity and partnership prevail in the potential challenges ahead.

Dave Koehler
Johnny Janosik
Laurel, Del.

We currently have a broad mix of domestic products and imports. We will need to determine what the tariffs mean for our domestic partners in terms of components used in their manufacturing and what other opportunities may be available from them now that the playing field has changed.

They may become a better value in some categories if they are able to control the cost of their imported components.

We will certainly be looking to evaluate our current sources and partners to determine overall and perceived value and look at sources from countries with lower tariffs. You can’t immediately drop and re-source your best sellers, so we believe it is going to take some time to shift strategy and evaluate the capabilities and capacity of new sources.

Andrew Tepperman
Tepperman’s
Windsor, Ontario

Our approach at market is first to mitigate price increases to the consumer. The consumer still has retail PTSD from last year’s inflation spike.  We’ve had 50-plus year relationships with some of our U.S. partners and will continue doing business for another 50-plus years.

We have two current challenges: The Canadian dollar valuation decline (since everything we purchase from the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America is in U.S. dollars); and the tariff impact to the retail price.

Our goal is to hunt for the best values, some will be from U.S. suppliers and some will not. Some of our U.S. suppliers are helping us work through this period. In some cases, we will be forced to move our supply chain to other countries.

In 2021, the Canadian federal government did a deep dive into Asian upholstery suppliers shipping to Canada. In a similar way, we assessed each supplier and each SKU to see what would still work and what we needed to re-source. We will follow a similar approach.

The sad thing for our industry is that the furniture manufacturers and retailers on both sides of the border are caught up in a political war that has nothing to do with the Canadian or U.S. furniture industries. The tariffs on both sides end up in the governments bank accounts as retail prices increase.  All we can do is move forward and hope that common sense will prevail.

Alex Wright
Wright’s Furniture & Flooring
Dieterich, Ill.

We are going to identify our best-selling items with our key vendors and lean into them more heavily, rather than take a risk on new, unproven items at these higher prices.

Scott Bowman
Zak’s Home
Johnson City, Tenn.

I am going to this market focusing on domestic suppliers and companies with no or little tariff at the time of the market.

This situation is just like the freight surcharges being levied during COVID. It took two years to get rid of all the high-cost inventory from that debacle. and I am not going to get into it again, which means containers from Vietnam, Indonesia, Italy and China are going to be paused until if and when this passes over.

Mexico and Canada aren’t being affected yet so we will continue importing from these countries. In fact, anyone with a substantial tariff, I am simply not going to visit at this market except maybe Vietnam companies because they have already stated they are going to eliminate tariffs on the U.S. We’ll see how that goes.

This market will be a domestic-focused market. We have already introduced a Mavin gallery, Archbold gallery and will be looking at others such as Millcraft. We do have a Canadel gallery that so far hasn’t been affected by tariffs. And we still do have International Furniture, Vintage and Furniture Source from Mexico. They haven’t been affected yet either.

I am also going to start paying more attention to manufacturer close-outs they already have in inventory that are not tariffed. I may even stock up on this if things don’t settle out shortly.