The announcement came in April 2025. The US tariff on appliances imported from China had been revised to 170%.
At 170%, the landed cost of Our Place's Wonder Oven and Dream Cookers exceeded the retail price for most SKU configurations. The existing supply chain wasn't strained. It was economically inert. There was no version of "import from China" that made sense at that rate.
The appliance inventory would run out by late August. We had roughly 90 days to figure out a different country of origin or watch the primary revenue-generating SKUs go to zero.
What "pivot production to Thailand" actually means
The phrase sounds strategic. The reality of executing it under a 90-day deadline is something else.
Thailand production was the viable path because of how country-of-origin rules work. To reclassify goods as Thai-origin rather than Chinese-origin, the manufacturing process in Thailand needs to constitute substantial transformation, with a minimum of 20% value-add performed on Thai soil. The structure: ship components from China to a Thailand facility, perform assembly operations that exceed the 20% value-add threshold, then export the finished goods as Thai-origin products at standard tariff rates.
This isn't a loophole. It's established trade law, and it's the same approach manufacturers across multiple industries used in 2025 as the US-China tariff environment became increasingly hostile.
The conversations that followed the announcement were blunt. The Our Place COO and I went through the same questions every client in this situation asks: Can we find a Thailand facility that can handle this product? How long will it take to qualify the assembly process for customs compliance? What's the realistic production timeline from the date we sign a contract to the date we have Thai-origin goods at a US port?
The answers weren't comfortable. Getting a facility operational, training workers on the assembly process, running the first production run, and shipping product takes time that a 90-day stockout window doesn't easily accommodate.
The numbers that drove every decision
110,000 units. That was the production requirement to avoid stockout. The number of Wonder Ovens and Dream Cookers that needed to come through the Thailand facility within roughly three months to keep the channel alive.
That's an aggressive production ramp by any measure. A facility that has never made this product before, assembling 110,000 units in 90 days, with customs documentation structured to support a country-of-origin reclassification. The lead time math left almost no room for anything going wrong.
What breaks during a production move like this? The short list: factory negotiation runs longer than expected because the facility wants to understand the liability exposure of a new product line. Tooling that works in the Chinese facility doesn't transfer directly to the Thai facility. The value-add calculation needs to be documented in a way that satisfies customs. Doing 20% value-add isn't enough; you need to prove it with process documentation and cost breakdowns that survive a customs audit. The first production run almost always has a quality issue that delays the second.
None of this is hypothetical. Every one of those problems is real, and the 90-day timeline assumed most of them wouldn't happen simultaneously.
What we did in parallel
Supply chain restructuring at this speed doesn't give you the luxury of sequential problem-solving. While the Thailand production pivot was being negotiated, we accelerated the EU marketplace expansion.
The logic was straightforward: the tariff exposure was concentrated in the US channel because the US was where Our Place was most dependent on Chinese-origin appliances. Getting UK and Australia and EU marketplaces generating revenue faster reduced the consequence of a US stockout if the Thailand timeline slipped. It didn't eliminate the risk. It changed the shape of the worst-case outcome.
EU expansion via Pan-EU FBA also opened a parallel question about whether EU-bound products could be sourced differently, without the same China-origin exposure that US imports faced. That analysis ran alongside the Thailand conversations.
What I'd tell any brand in the same position
The tariff announcement was Wednesday. The right response on Wednesday is not to start researching Thailand factories. The right response is to get your inventory position documented. How many units you have, when they'll run out, which SKUs are in the affected category. Get that picture before you make any production decision.
The inventory position is the clock. Once you know how many days of supply you have, you know what timeline you're working with, and every subsequent decision about production alternatives, marketplace diversification, and price adjustments flows from that number.
Our Place had the advantage of an experienced COO who understood both the trade mechanics and the production realities. Most brands facing their first tariff crisis don't. They hear "move production to Thailand" and imagine it's a phone call and a few weeks of lead time. It isn't. It's factory vetting, customs compliance documentation, value-add process engineering, new supplier relationships for components, and a production ramp that needs to hit 110,000 units in three months.
Whether that's achievable depends on decisions made in the first week. Not the third.
