During normal times, running a hardware business is tough. Throw in a tariff-driven trade war, and it becomes a full-blown crisis.
Just ask Robin Liss. When the CEO of kitchen appliance maker Suvie saw that President Trump wasn’t backing down from imposing steep tariffs on products from China and beyond, she realized she’d have to move manufacturing out of China or risk her entire business.
Liss told CNBC she’d need to reconfigure Suvie’s manufacturing and supply chain operations on an accelerated timeline or miss out on her most important sales season in the fall.
From CNBC:
Suvie’s products—kitchen gadgets that can whip up dinner in a matter of minutes—are built in a facility located in one of China’s largest manufacturing hubs and consist of more than 500 components sourced throughout the country.
After running the numbers and calculating the costs associated with the new tariffs, Liss headed to Asia in March in search of a Plan B.
“I’m going to run out of appliances,” Liss said ahead of her two-week trip to Taiwan and Vietnam. “I’ve got to figure this out.”
While tariffs impact nearly any company with a global supply chain, consumer hardware manufacturers—from Apple and Google to Suvie—are especially vulnerable. That’s because most rely on Asian manufacturing after decades of offshoring has hollowed out U.S. manufacturing capacity. Bringing production stateside would require massive cost increases and a multi-year transition at best.
Suvie is just one of many hardware makers now scrambling to rewrite their supply chain playbook in response to the tariffs. The question is: how many can actually make the leap—and survive?
