Cher'Don Reynolds is the owner of She Prints It, a Black-owned promotional products company that offers services like custom printing, signage, graphic design, and more. She said the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs is making it difficult to be competitive. (Marlon Hyde/WABE)
Some of Atlanta’s small businesses say they are struggling to source products and raw materials as the uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariff program continues.
A press conference on April 24 hosted at Wild Heaven Beer in Avondale Estates brought together small business owners to share how economic uncertainty and increasing costs are impacting their future.
Angela Hawkins runs Bamblu, a Black-owned company that sells bedding and pajamas made from bamboo fabric.
“I use quality bamboo fabrics. And we just don’t manufacture that type of fabric in the United States,” Hawkins told WABE.
She said she wants to produce in the United States to avoid the tariffs, but she can only get her materials from China.
“Ultimately, I’m gonna have to pay that tariff regardless until we can manufacture in the U.S. what China has perfected over the last 20 years,” Hawkins said.
Angela Hawkins runs Bamblu, a Black-Owned bedding & pajamas company where everything is made from bamboo fabric. (Marlon Hyde/WABE)
Small business owners like Hawkins said they are fighting to manage costs and prevent passing them down to customers.
“We felt the consumer confidence squeeze probably about a year and a half now. So we had seen our numbers start to decrease. Even if the people have money, even if a customer has money, they don’t know what’s going to come tomorrow,” Hawkins said.
Take Patrice Hull, for example. Her business, Stuff We Want to Say, is a Black-owned custom tees and apparel company.
“The whiplash of back and forth is disheartening to me, because I don’t know what to order, when to order. And when I order, I don’t know how much my product is going to cost at the end,” Hull told WABE.
She imports goods from Canada, Mexico, and China.
“The knobs and pulls are from China. We also have material and fabric from Mexico. So I’m really using all three of the places hit the hardest by the tariffs,” Hull said.
Patrice Hull runs Stuff We Want to Say, a Black-Owned custom tees and apparel company. (Marlon Hyde/WABE)
After being in business for over a decade, she worries about losing customers.
“At this point, I don’t want to raise the prices of the bags because I don’t know what the price should be raised to. The tariffs are one thing one day and one thing another day. So I don’t wanna give my customers whiplash,” Hull said.
As does Cher’Don Reynolds, the owner of She Prints It, a Black-owned promotional products company that offers services like custom printing, signage, graphic design and more.
Reynolds said materials like blank mugs, made in China, on average, cost between $1 and $3.
“And the U.S. version of that would be somewhere between $7 to $9 per unit prior to decoration,” Reynolds told WABE.
Every day the trade war drags on, Reynolds said, it becomes more difficult to compete in the marketplace.
“The downside to that is that it takes away from our profit margins, which we typically use to help empower the community,” Reynolds said.
She aims to give back by hiring people from the community and offering grants to other small businesses that generate less than $100,000 in revenue — two things she said she’s scaling back during the current economic uncertainty.
“Primarily, we serve other small businesses. And they are going through the same troubling times, whether it’s from tariffs or the DEI rollbacks or so many other policy initiatives that are impacting everyday people,” Reynolds said.
