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Afina founder Ramon van Meer wanted to see if people would buy a made-in-usa version of his specialist shower head.
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He discovered that it would cost three times as much to produce – and increased the selling price by 85%.
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After a few days of testing, a total of zero customers bought the USA model.
As the owner of a small company, Ramon said more that he is used to hearing people say that they would be willing to pay more for products made in America.
When President Donald Trump raised the rates on Chinese import by an extra 145%, Van Meer decided to see if shoppers would place their money where their mouth is.
“I wanted to know the answer and then use it for my own company,” the founder of Afina told Business Insider.
So the serial entrepreneur began to find our suppliers to make his best -selling product: a specialized filtered shower head.
Van Meer said that his filters in the US were made, some extra materials come from Vietnam and the end product is made in China with a single supplier.
To move everything to the US, he said he should find four to six separate suppliers who would treat various aspects of the production process. All in all, he discovered that it would cost three times as much to produce – more than the costs to easily pay the rate.
Armed with real figures, he wanted to do a test with two identical products, with the only difference their origin and, critically, their price: visitors to the website of Afina received the option of a Chinese made item for $ 129 or a version made in the US for $ 239.
“I'm big to just test it with real data and real purchases,” Van Meer said. “Don't ask customers, not a survey, not even add-to-carts.”
“If someone has to pay for it, that's the actual real data,” he added.
After a few days and more than 25,000 visitors, he said that he had sold 584 of the cheaper shower heads and no purchase of a version made by the US.
In a blog post that went viral, Van Meer mentioned the results 'sobering'.
“We wanted to believe that customers would support American labor with their dollars. But when we were confronted with a real decision – not a survey or a commentary part – they didn't do that,” he wrote.
Nowadays, Van Meer said that he spends most of his time to move production from China to a country with a lower rate percentage.
“Staying in China is not sustainable, because even if they close a deal, we don't know what will happen,” he said. “The United States is also not an option, because there are simply no facilities that can make it.”
