LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — The ever-changing tariff landscape is affecting prices on products from an international scale all the way down to local businesses.
House by JSD, a Lexington business that specializes in faux floral arrangements, already has pallets of product for the upcoming fall and wintertime.
“This is no longer anything, like anything, we've ever experienced before,” said House by JSD co-owner Jeremy Rice. “They just kept exponentially growing and so it's been really a nightmare.”
While House orders items for the fall and winter soon after the holidays end, Rice shared the items normally do not start shipping until June or July, with the bulk arriving in September.
"Fortunately, a lot of our suppliers and vendors said, ‘hey, we have a lot of your order in. We can go ahead and send it to you,’ and as soon as we heard that we knew we had the room, we said yes,” Rice shared.
The early shipment was approved in mid-March. House now has pallets sitting in their back storage area. Some of the items incorporate autumn colors or Christmas-themed designs.
“I think so far we've already received 12 pallets and we have like six or seven more coming,” Rice said.
These items were shipped before the tariffs went into effect. For the moment, House has kept their prices the same, however, that may change.
“When we've got future orders that have to be shipped, we don't know what they're going to have to be adjusted to, but we're going to have to adjust the price,” said Rice. “What it's costing them to get it into the country Is going up, but we don't know what their markup is to us to buy it.”
Rice has faced the question, ‘why not just buy American?’ The answer, he says, is not so simple.
“We used to make these flowers here in the country, but now all of it's moved overseas and it's been overseas for a number of years,” Rice explained. “There aren't American companies for us to order these products from.”
“If we could find it here, we would,” Rice added. “When people say buy American, don't forget we're the American, we're the store, the small businesses that actually builds the community.”
“It's not that we're trying to turn our backs on the country. We're proud of America in so many capacities, we're just doing the best that we can with the situation and that's not going to get fixed in 90 days or 120 days. This is decades long if you're going to try to fix this problem,” Rice concluded.
