New Jersey "Rinseroo" entrepreneur says tariffs are "literally business-busting"

CBS News

08-05-2025

Flowers may be more expensive this spring due to tariffs
Flowers may be more expensive this spring due to tariffs
Flowers may be more expensive this spring due to tariffs
A New Jersey entrepreneur who built her company from the ground up is worried about the impact tariffs are going to have on her business.
From her basement in Millstone Township, Lisa Lane taught herself how to create a product, manufacture it in China, and sell it exclusively online.
"Started in 2019. I was at the Shore. I was bathing my dogs and cleaning my shower walls with a bucket and I thought, 'There's gotta be a better way.' And then right there in the shower is where the concept of Rinseroo came to be," Lane said.
The Rinseroo is a slip-on shower hose. It sold so well online that Lane's son joined the business, and now they have a line of almost a dozen products. After five years in business and three attempts to get on their dream show, they finally made it on "Shark Tank."
"Getting on 'Shark Tank' is like getting into Harvard. It was five years later," Lane said.
Sales took off - some 200,000 units a year.
"Just like so many American dreams happen - it starts in the driveway, it starts in the basement," Lane said.
"It is literally business-busting"
But then tariffs hit.
"Tariffs are like a tax. When we started in 2019, it was about 12%. Landed cost was 40 cents to our cost of goods. Then it went up to 19%, which still was doable. And then when Trump was running for office, we thought maybe 25% - I could still absorb that. But now... 145%. It is literally business-busting. There is zero margin left," Lane said.
Lisa Lane holds up a component of her "Rinseroo" product that costs 40 cents to produce in China and says it would cost $5 to produce the same component in the U.S.
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She looked into manufacturing in the United States. She found that just one part of her product which costs 40 cents when made in China would cost $5 to make in the United States.
Her manufacturer even considered moving production out of China.
"To Cambodia, but they said the cost of goods will go up 30%. At the moment, there's a hold on tariffs in Cambodia, but potentially a 49% tariff. So am I any better off going there? I feel our hands are strapped," Lane said.
"There's a lot of collateral damage"
She's also worried about all the manufacturing relationships she has built.
"There's a lot of collateral damage from it," she said. "I actually feel bad for people in China, too."
Lane says small, online-only companies are especially vulnerable. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, they lack the infrastructure and ability to put products in front of customers, which can sometimes help offset sudden cost increases.
"Pay my employees, my social media, my son, my accountant. The new tariff adds like $6 per unit to my bottom line. When I calculate any multiply $6 times 200,000 units, zero is left," Lane said.
Right now, she has inventory stuck in Shanghai that she can't afford to ship because of the new extra cost when it lands.
"A lot of companies, from what I understand, their product gets to the port, they can't afford to pay it, and it sits there, or they have to store it for a couple hundred dollars a day, to hold until the tariffs go down, or they abandon it," Lane said. "It's not sustainable. What do we do? I don't know."
Lane is hoping the Trump administration rolls tariffs back before Rinseroos are priced out past their limit.