Current vignette inside Oasis Home Designs.
It seems as if every few years our industry has been shaken up by world events and had to pivot and lean into changes in order to survive. COVID really shook things up with supply and demand issues, closed business and retail, and more. But now we are presented with the entirely new frontier of tariffs.
Our raw materials and much of our finished products are sourced from outside the United States and largely our industry has settled into this comfort zone.
It seems like these new tariff policies are changing like an amoeba. Mercurial. The only thing we know is that there are many unknowns. And the only constant we know is that there are new costs associated with doing business and so many of us are trying to adapt our businesses into what is still somewhat unknown.
So, what to do. I can only share my strategies as a small business, an intimate boutique that specializes in delivering a personal experience for both our retail and design services.
We will be leaning into the service aspect of our business more heavily. Developing a new contract moving forward wherein our design fees and service bear more importance than the product sales. I believe this conveys a message of the “Value” with a capital “V” of working with us. We will also try to work with ‘makers’ and suppliers as stateside as possible, but recognize that their raw materials are subject to tariffs.
A specialty of our service is to integrate a client’s existing furnishings into the updated design, and with that we believe that this now more than ever, is important.
Our retail inventory so far has not been negatively impacted. It is too early in the game to assess this. But moving forward we will be proactively quoting all new products and new store inventory with a 10-15% additional markup built into the initial pricing to keep ourselves covered. With time, hopefully, we may be able to provide some discounts to customers as this brave new world all unfolds.
Nancy Mikulich is an interior designer and owner of Oasis Home in Asbury Park, N.J.
See also:
Advice for those considering a retail business | Nancy Mikulich
