Tariff Impacts at Beautiful Habitat
Navigating Tariffs and Supply Chain Challenges: How Beautiful Habitat’s Vendor Strategy Delivers Quality and Value
Over the past few months, you’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about tariffs and their impact on the prices of everything. Home Goods is a category poised to take a big hit as there are many cheap imports from China, India, and Vietnam to name a few.
However, Beautiful Habitat has already taken decisive steps to partner with the very best domestic manufacturers and vendors to ensure seamless, high-quality service for every project. We are seeing minimal tariff disruptions through the core vendors with whom we partner. We are proud of the relationships we’ve built and this is the perfect opportunity to introduce you to our favorite suppliers.
A History of Resilience
Since our founding in 2007, Beautiful Habitat has collaborated with countless manufacturers from around the world. Then the COVID-19 pandemic exposed two critical vulnerabilities in our supply chain. Two of our biggest challenges in 2021-2022 were
- Shipping Delays: Long lead times and port congestion delayed shipments of overseas products.
- Quality Control Issues: Many manufacturers struggled to maintain consistent standards under the increased demand and with reduced or staggered workforce.
This created a lot of headaches and delays for our clients and our design team. Faced with these obstacles, we paused to reevaluate our vendor network—asking ourselves, “How can we improve quality, reliability, ease and satisfaction for our clients?”
Defining Our Vendor Criteria
As the business owner, I established new pillars for our ideal partnerships:
- Quality & Reliability: I’ve written before about the Real Costs of Cheap Furniture
- American-Made with a Craftsmanship Focus: While American made products are a step in the right direction, we’ve gone even further, by prioritizing “bench-made” products over assembled. A bench-made piece of furniture means that 1-2 craftspeople make the entire piece from start to finish. This is different from assembly furniture that moves down a line where multiple people do a reparative task. There is more pride and love in a bench-made piece.
- Sustainability Focus: I’ve always had a quiet focus on sustainability and environmentally responsible choices. Quiet, in that we just included these in our designs without being overt. We are now taking this a step further by purposefully selecting vendor partners that have a stated environmental focus.
- Company and Community Values: Like sustainability, we want to partner with companies that display care toward their employees and larger community.
Over the last three years, I’ve personally researched, vetted, and forged relationships with U.S. manufacturers who share our commitment to exceptional craftsmanship and environmental responsibility.
Weathering the Tariff Storm
What began as a proactive search for better partners and products has ultimately positioned us perfectly in this current climate of tariffs and/or tariff uncertainty. By relying on trusted American vendors, Beautiful Habitat:
- Avoids Unexpected Duties: While our vendors are not totally immune to price increases, we are seeing only incremental increases due to the predominately domestic manufacturing.
- Keeps Projects on Schedule: Local production means shorter lead times and greater flexibility. No port back up nightmares like 2022.
- Quality: Bench made and handmade products are a higher quality product made by craftspeople.
And, as I’ve shared before, Relationships Matter. We nurture and value our relationships with our vendors so that we can ensue the best customer service for our clients.
Meet Our Favorite American Manufacturers
In the next few articles, I’ll introduce you to our favorite manufactures and the values that they embody and we are proud to bring to our clients.
- Cabinets: We’ve partnered with sister cabinet brands. Learn why the employee-owned companies are bringing a superior product and level of care to our clients.
- Furniture: We’ve partnered with both Upholstery and Casegoods companies that offer superior bench-made products and one even comes signed and dated by the artisan who builds it.
- Tile: We’ve identified US-made tiles from a handful companies that are B-certified, or have other strong environmental goals.
At Beautiful Habitat, our clients deserve more than beautiful design—they deserve peace of mind. By investing in American-made partnerships, we’re able to offer quality, and delivery like never before. Stay tuned for in-depth vendor spotlights.
If you’re ready to explore these exceptional products on your next project, reach out—we can’t wait to help bring your vision to life.
Are you interested in learning more about our design philosophy and quality? Read on:
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