As the owner of a small business, Ramon Van Meer said he used to hear people say that they would be ready to pay more for products made in America.
When President Donald Trump reduced prices on Chinese imports by an additional 145%, Van Meer decided to see if the buyers would put their money where their mouths are.
“I wanted to know the answer, then use it for my own business,” the founder of Afina told Business Insider.
Thus, the serial entrepreneur began to find American suppliers to make his best -selling product: a specialized filtered shower head.
Van Meer said that its filters are made in the United States, some additional materials come to Vietnam and that the final product is made in China with a single supplier.
To move everything in the United States, he said that he had to find four to six separate suppliers that would manage various aspects of the production process. All in all, he found that it would cost three times more to produce – more than the cost of simply paying the price.
Armed with real figures, he decided to take a test with two identical products, the only difference being their origin and, critically, their price: visitors to the Afina website were presented to the option of a Chinese manufacturing item for $ 129 or an American manufacturing version for $ 239.
“I am very testing it with real data and real purchases,” said Van Meer. “Do not ask customers, not an investigation, not even additions.”
“When someone has to pay for this, it’s the real real data,” he added.
After several days and more than 25,000 visitors, he said that he had sold 584 low-cost shower potatoes and not a single purchase of a version made in the United States.
AFINA’s A / B test results, showing 0 purchases for the more expensive version made in the USA of its shower head. AFINA
In a blog article that has become viral, Van Meer qualified the results of “Sobant”.
“We wanted to believe that customers supported American work with their dollars. But faced with a real decision – not a survey or a section of comments – they did not do it,” he wrote.
Nowadays, Van Meer said that he spent most of his time trying to move China production to a country with a lower rate rate.
“Staying in China is not durable because even if they have an agreement, we don’t know what will happen,” he said. “The United States is not an option either, because there is simply no installation that can do so.”
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The results were brutal:
🚫 0 Customers bought the American version
⬇️ The addition rate for the American version was less than 1%
📍 More than 3,500 bought the version made in Asia pic.twitter.com/pldvrstyj2– Ramon van Meer (@ramonvanmeer) April 24, 2025
Van Meer said that Faina has currently had enough inventory in her American warehouses to last until August, when he should start to charge the price.
When asked if he was going to roll this cost in the price or apply an additional supplement, as other companies said, Van Meer said he had not yet decided.
“We are probably going to do tests,” he said.
