Steve Greenspan
Appearances
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
This is influenced by tariffs, absolutely. This is an exceedingly difficult, long-term, disruptive process.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
That's the name of the company. It's a little play off the Honey Do list. So one of our goals is to try and enable folks to do things around the house. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a spot that I can organize and make it a little bit more efficient.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
I would probably say it's the man cave. I've got everything well organized there. I know exactly where everything is. I've got a little smoothie station. Then have that down to a science.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Yeah, protein shakes, exactly. I'm a marathon runner and a triathlete.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
So I started Honey Can Do in 2007. I started as a complete greenfield, no employees, no products, no customers, no vendors, no anything, and just built it from there.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
When I first started getting involved in producing products in Asia, which is the late 90s, early 2000s, China was the place to be. And it was because the infrastructure was there, it was low-cost labor, and you could do things efficiently, high quality, and you're able to find partners that understand your needs and can make the infrastructure work for you.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
So then once the initial tariffs hit China in 2018, and even before that when there was the talk about it, we and our subcontractors, our longtime partners in China, started having discussions and made plans to very quickly move outside of China.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
This is tens of millions of dollars worth of investment. We're starting with literally a pasture and building it up from there. You have to train employees that have never made this type of product before. You have to build up your entire infrastructure for raw materials as well as the cardboard boxes that the products go into. You have to build your transportation network.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
You have to build your shipping network because now you're going out of new ports in a new country. And this is a very, very disruptive thing.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
In China, they have a very wide network of multi-lane highways that can bring you just about anywhere that you would need to go. In Vietnam, typically it's one highway going from city to city that's two lanes, and you might have a series of trucks that are being slowed down by somebody using an animal. to pull them, or it might even be a number of bicycles there that are blocking up traffic.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
And, you know, you might be able to go the same distance in one hour in China, and it might take you four hours in Vietnam to do the same distance.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Exactly. And then deep water ports. You know, Vietnam does not have the same access, and there's port delays and ship delays and everything else. And it's inefficient and causes higher pricing.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
There's a lot of talk about tariffs. Everyone's thinking about it. We're telling our larger customers that the tariffs are going to become higher and it's going to affect us. I'm a little bit worried. It's a challenge, you know, like everybody will be paying more. And, you know, there's complete uncertainty.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
The answer is maybe. In some cases, the landed cost is less expensive than paying the tariffs out of China.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
So as of now, and this process started even before the most recent tariffs were announced, we started expediting moving products out of China very quickly and into Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia have been the primary targets there.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
No. Making these types of products within the U.S., the infrastructure doesn't exist, and we don't have competitive labor to be able to do these things. You know, we're talking about, in our case, a drying rack that might retail for under $19.99. So it's not even a conversation for our types of products to be made in the United States.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
We're moving significantly more to Cambodia, Thailand, more in Vietnam, and Indonesia as well.