-
Lisa Harrington is shifting 80% of her product catalog to a US-based manufacturer.
-
The move is a response to Trump’s tariffs on goods from China.
-
It’ll cost her more to produce in the States, but she says it’s worth it for the peace of mind.
As a full-time Amazon seller, Lisa Harrington relies heavily on her manufacturer.
“They can make or break your business in terms of really producing something that’s high quality,” the founder of Purrfect Portal told Business Insider.
Harrington, who started selling dog harnesses and, eventually, interior cat doors, found her first manufacturer through Alibaba, a popular online platform for sourcing products. She worked with them for about four years before pivoting to a different factory in China that her mentor referred her to.
That switch happened nearly 10 years ago, and she wasn’t planning to make any changes to her supply chain — until President Donald Trump announced tariffs on all imports from China to the US in early 2025.
Moving 80% of her catalog to a US-based manufacturer
Trump’s flip-flopping on tariffs has left business owners feeling uncertain and vulnerable.
“I’ve honestly just had so many sleepless nights over the tariffs,” said Harrington, “I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I’ve never been in a scenario where my cost of goods could double overnight or triple overnight, and I just couldn’t handle that stress anymore.”
The only solution to alleviate her stress was to onshore a number of her products.
“Starting in October, 80% of our catalog is going to be made in the USA,” she said, adding that the move “was not on my bingo card, but things are changing quickly.”
Producing in the States — specifically, in a factory she found in Rhode Island — is “definitely going to cost more,” she said. But, it’s peace of mind she’s after.
“Not having to obsessively look at Truth Social or The Wall Street Journal to see what’s happening overnight with my business costs, it’s just worth it.”
Harrington, who is a member of various e-comm networks, including the exclusive Million Dollar Sellers community, says most business owners she’s spoken to don’t have the option of switching manufacturers.
“I’m one of the few people who can actually onshore,” she said. “There are just so many people I know who can’t. They just can’t because the numbers just still don’t make any sense.”
Transitioning to a new manufacturer is expensive and time-consuming.
E-commerce entrepreneur Shan Shan Fu, who sells over 100 products on Amazon in the women’s clothing and accessory space, told BI in May that switching suppliers isn’t feasible for her.
“The 100 products come from all different factories, so to change and have another factory in, say, Vietnam, replicate what many, many factories are already making, and making it at the same quality and level, is going to take years and years and years, and it would cost more money,” she said.
She added that most factories require a minimum order quantity: “So they’ll say, ‘We can’t custom-make anything for you unless you order 2,000 pieces.’ But if you’re a small business, often you can’t buy 2,000 pieces right away; you might buy 200, then 500, then 1,000, and you scale up slowly.”
For many small businesses, suddenly having to place a large order with new suppliers “just isn’t doable,” she said. “So, we don’t have a lot of flexibility to leave China.”
Harrington, whose closable, plastic cat doors bring in seven figures in annual revenue, said she feels extremely lucky that the economics are working out for her.
“I suspect it’s because it’s plastic. I suspect it’s because I have good margins. I suspect it’s because I found a really good factory. I feel like a lot of things aligned to make it possible for me to move over,” she said.
“But I don’t know another single person who’s doing this because either they can’t find a factory or they’ve gotten prices from American factories, and it’s still much more expensive to make it here than it is to deal with the tariffs.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
