Ramon van Meer makes a $129 filtered shower head manufactured in China. With tariffs surging, he explored whether customers would pay more for a product made in America. CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich talks to Van Meer about the results of his experiment.

Donald Trump has signed an order to impose tariffs imports into the U.S. from countries including China, Mexico and Canada.

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Ramon van Meer, founder and CEO of Afina, conducted an experiment to compare customer interest in a filtered shower head manufactured in China to one produced in the United States. The Chinese-made shower head retails for $129, while the American-made version was priced $100 higher to reflect the increased production costs. Van Meer aimed to assess whether customers would pay a premium for a product labeled “made in America,” particularly in the context of increased tariffs on imported goods.

Afina offered both versions to a group of 25,000 potential customers. The company sold 584 units of the Chinese-made shower head but did not sell any units of the higher-priced American-made version. Van Meer expressed surprise at the lack of interest in the American-made option, despite online feedback indicating some consumers would pay more for U.S.-made products.

Van Meer noted that the experiment suggests most consumers are not willing to pay significantly more for domestically produced goods in this product category. He also observed that, while bringing more manufacturing back to the United States is possible for some products, certain items—such as filtered shower heads—currently lack any U.S.-based production facilities. According to Van Meer, shifting manufacturing to the U.S. on a large scale would take several years to implement.



This business owner tested ‘made in America'

You ran a test where you made a showerhead in China, made that same showerhead in the United States, but the cost was different. Tell me what you wanted to find out with this test. I wanted to see how much will it cost if I would make it here and then calculate how much do I need to sell it to maintain the same margins so I can keep the lights on of the company and grow the company. Number two, I saw a lot of comments online of people saying that they're willing to pay more if it's made in the U.S. If the majority of the people would buy the more expensive made in the U.S. version, I feel more comfortable spending time, money and investment in finding solutions in the United States. Ramon Van Mier is the founder and CEO of Afina, a company that manufactures filtered showerheads in China. After President Donald Trump announced tariffs on virtually every U.S. import, Van Mier decided to conduct a test to see if 25,000 potential customers would buy his product if it was made in the U.S., despite being more expensive. We sold 584, I believe, of the made in China version, priced at $129. And unfortunately, zero made in the U.S. version priced at $100 more. Were you surprised? Yes. My assumption was that people would opt in for the cheaper, but I was not expecting that zero people would buy, that nobody would buy the made in the U.S. What does that say about the American consumer? We all love deals. I think we all love discounts and getting something for as cheap as possible. So I don't think we're ready yet to move all manufacturing facilities or all manufacturing of products back to the U.S. because not everyone is willing to pay the premium yet. So one of the reasons President Trump has ignited this global trade war is because he wants to bring manufacturing of products like yours back to the United States. What have you found in your research? Is that even possible? It's possible for some products, but for products that are not made here at the moment, for example, for me, for filtered showerheads, there's not one manufacturing facility that makes it. I think if we as a country really want to decide that we want everything to be brought back and made here, it's going to take many years before we actually could do that.

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