Erica Campbell pushes aside Crayons and Play-Doh to make room for her laptop on the dining room table in her Phoenix home.
“I have been living with a real sense of anxiety this week. Feeling very overwhelmed with my workload,” Campbell said.
Aside from her other full-time job as a mom to three young kids, Campbell runs the e-commerce website, “Be A Heart.” Her website sells Catholic-inspired products that people buy around holidays or for someone getting their first communion or confirmation, and the items range from dolls to children’s jewelry.
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“Almost exclusively, they are made in China,” Campbell said, which has made the last few months pretty stressful for her. We spoke to her right before the first wave of tariffs was put into place in April, and she was planning on having to raise prices.
Her best-selling item is her “Jesus Heals” band-aids. Campbell says even if she wanted to shift production to the United States, being a small business makes that difficult.
“The U.S. manufacturers that make band-aids won’t even talk to someone like me because I’m not making the quantity that Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens are making,” Campbell said.
When tariffs exceeded 100%, Campbell had to pause her orders, leaving her inventory depleted.
“My shop is out of stock on a lot of things. I only have so much money to pay for my cost of goods in inventory,” she said.
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Now, with the recent 90-day deal made, she is working quickly to import merchandise from China while tariffs are temporarily lowered. She says many other small business owners are rushing to ship their products as well, creating new challenges.
“The cargo companies are raising their prices because the demand is so high,” Campbell said. “We don’t know what is going to happen one day to the next.”
On Monday, Campbell is traveling to Washington, D.C., with the National Retail Federation to speak with lawmakers. She hopes her small business success story can make a small difference when it comes to making a long-term deal.
“It is hurting us. So if we can have a voice in this conversation, on what this really looks like, maybe there can be some more nuance to these negotiations,” Campbell said.
