The recent tariffs and ensuing trade war have raised prices in North Carolina’s textile industry and are impacting small businesses all the way to California’s Central Coast.
Camay Arad, the owner of Chameleon Style, owns a unique fabric, furniture, and design store in San Luis Obispo, California. Arad gets 90% of her supplies from companies based in the Carolinas, about 60% with companies specifically in North Carolina.
Arad sells decorator fabrics for upholstery, primarily for the furniture she designs, manufactures, and develops, called Chameleon Fine Furniture.
“It’s slip-covered furniture that doesn’t look slip-covered,” Arad told the Carolina Journal. “We’re just beginning to experience the rise in the tariffs, but I can tell you that over the last week and a half, I’ve gotten probably about five to 10 emails a day from different mills trying to figure out how they’re going to price things.”
Crypton Mills, based in Cliffside, North Carolina, has delayed shipments because of the rise in tariffs, and at least one of their facilities was impacted by Hurricane Helene. Another North Carolina-based retailer used for supplying textiles is Valdese Weavers, based in Valdese, North Carolina.
“We’ve established a wonderful relationship with their sales team [Crypton], and they try to communicate,” said Arad.
She explained how the rise in tariffs impacts her business, her customers, and ultimately her profit margin.
“I still need to stay in production on my end; I have to have the fabric, yes, it increases the price, and unfortunately, I’ve already priced it for the consumer,” continued Arad. “I’ve already given a price back in late February or early March based on pricing then, and I know that the price increase will affect my bottom line; I can’t change it with the customer.”
Arad gave a practical example of how the tariff rise impacts both the retailer and the consumer. If the wholesale cost increases by $2, this translates to an actual increase of $4 to $5 on the retail side. A $5 per yard increase for a customer purchasing 15 yards to upholster a sofa or to buy a custom sofa results in an additional $60 compared to what would have been paid just a week earlier.
Arad also stocks several “jobber books,” an industry term. A “jobber book” is a directory of wholesale fabric retailers. Essentially, a “jobber” is an industry middleman. She told the Carolina Journal that one wholesaler she works with out of Oklahoma buys its fabrics from China and India. They mill and buy their fabrics from various sources too, so their costs have increased. This, in turn, will make Arad’s costs further rise.
North Carolina’s textile industry is unlikely to return to its glory days due to environmental regulations and EPA restrictions imposed in the 1980s and 1990s. This incentivized many mills to relocate overseas, explained Arad, based on her conversations with mill owners. US mills are largely outdated, and building new, high-tech facilities would be unbearably expensive compared to already-modernized mills in countries like China and India. Today’s mills also require a smaller, yet more highly trained workforce of college-educated technicians.
Fabric is an integral part of society, according to Arad, as it is found in everything from clothing to furniture.
The post Out-of-state clients concerned by rising NC textile prices first appeared on Carolina Journal.