If you're living in the United States today, you've likely heard the chatter about tariffs. President Trump announced on April 2, 2025 that he would be imposing very high tariffs on our global trading partners, and most heavily focused on our trading with China. The administration has stated that it aims to rebalance trade deficits, and ultimately increase exports from the United States to our global trading partners.
What is a tariff?
A tariff or import tax is a duty imposed by the government on imports of goods.
Who pays tariffs?
Tariffs are paid by the importer. In our case, when we import products from China, we pay the tariff to the United States government.
Where is UnbuckleMe made? Here's our Story.
When we first invented UnbuckleMe back in 2016, we decided to manufacture in the United States. Why? Because we had no idea what we were doing and it felt comfortable to keep things close to home. We also found a great partner in Iowa who helped us bring our rough prototypes to life. They also had small manufacturing minimums, and given how lightweight and small UnbuckleMe is, we weren't ready to import thousands of units. Our first production run was only a few hundred units.
Being honest, this chapter was a struggle. Our business was not very profitable during these early years. Of course any new product has a learning and adoption curve, and ours required significant market education and awareness, which was expensive (think: lots of Facebook ads!) People struggle with the problem, but were not aware that a solution even exists! But on top of that, our initial tooling (which is made in China and imported to the USA) was expensive, and we paid $16k for a single cavity tool. This means that it could only produce one part at a time... or technically, just 1/2 a part at a time since the undermold and overmold were actually in the same piece of aluminum and steel. It was highly inefficient, but we didn’t know what our future capacity needs would be, and this felt like an enormous investment already. We also had to print packaging (in New Jersey) and ship it to Texas, where we received unpackaged units that we packaged ourselves (in my mom's living room).
During these first few years, we were constantly getting phone calls about shortages in raw materials (many sourced from overseas), broken ejector pins, production delays, etc. and it was very difficult to scale our business with an unreliable supply chain. We were backordered in at least 2 colors for the entire summer after we aired on Shark Tank. Could we have improved our US supply chain? Yes, but at great expense. We needed new tooling with multiple cavities but the cost to make and import this tool from China was a LOT.
In 2020 (right after Shark Tank aired), we decided to move manufacturing to China principally to establish a reliable supply chain and enable us to order in larger quantities. Our multi-cavity tool cost less than $3k, and our factory in China helped us subsidize that cost over future purchase orders. Our Chinese factory is family run, and they have been a great partner for us, helping us make tooling improvements and delivering quality products on time. This was when our business really started to grow (along with post-Shark Tank awareness, yes) and we were grateful to be able to shift our everyday focus from supply chain to marketing. We hire a local team in Houston to receive containers, warehouse and ship orders, and it’s been running as a well-oiled machine for the last 5 years. We are profitable, and this small business supports my entire family.
Now, in April 2025, I don’t know what we’ll do next. Reinvesting in US manufacturing will be expensive and take 6-9 months to prepare. Tooling principally still comes from China, and importing a steel tool to the US will also involve tariffs. We are lucky to have about 6-9 months of inventory to wait a bit and decide, but it’s definitely not a stress-free situation. Ultimately if we need to move our manufacturing back to the US, or to Vietnam, or anywhere else, it will result in additional costs, which we may need to pass along to our customers, as much as we don't want to. For now, we're just waiting.
My friend and fellow small business entrepreneur Beth Benike discusses this situation in great detail, and how these proposed tariffs are impacting small businesses in the United States today, and immediately. Beth has only 2-3 months of inventory on hand, so her circumstances are much more serious than ours:
Thanks for reading, and we hope that sharing the small business perspective is informative. As always, we appreciate you, our customers, so very much, and our business wouldn't be a business without you.
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