[Senate Hearing 119-97]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 119-97
BEYOND THE TRAILHEAD: SUPPORTING OUTDOOR
RECREATION IN AN UNCERTAIN ECONOMY
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 30, 2025
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business and
Entrepreneurship
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-615 WASHINGTON : 2026
=======================================================================
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
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JONI ERNST, Iowa, Chair
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Ranking Member
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
TODD YOUNG, Indiana CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
TED BUDD, North Carolina JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
JAMES C. JUSTICE, West Virginia ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
JON HUSTED, Ohio
Meredith West, Republican Staff Director
Sean Moore, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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MAY 30, 2025
Opening Statements
Page
John W. Hickenlooper, U.S. Senator from Colorado................. 1
Witnesses
Mr. Travis Campbell, CEO, Eagle Creek, Steamboat Springs, CO..... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Mr. Mike Mojica, Founder, Outdoor Element, Englewood, CO......... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Mr. Trent Bush, Founder and CEO, ARTILECT Studio, Boulder, CO.... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 15
BEYOND THE TRAILHEAD: SUPPORTING
OUTDOOR RECREATION IN AN
UNCERTAIN ECONOMY
----------
FRIDAY, MAY 30, 2025
United States Senate,
Committee on Small Business
and Entrepreneurship,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:11 p.m., in
Lanny and Sharon Martin Family Foundation Room, History
Colorado Center, Hon. John Hickenlooper, presiding.
Present: Senator Hickenlooper [presiding].
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HICKENLOOPER
Senator Hickenlooper. We've now officially gaveled in.
Welcome, all of you. I appreciate you to come and join us for
this field hearing for the Committee on Small Business and
Entrepreneurship, basically, about the challenges and
opportunities that are facing entrepreneurs and small
businesses in the outdoor recreation industry.
Before we get started, I want to thank History Colorado for
this amazing space, this amazing building, and all that they do
to make sure we understand where we're coming from. And
actually, each of these entrepreneurs has origin stories, and
I'm sure we'll hear a lot of that today. Understanding how we
got to where we are, and how we should take facts and use
evidence to make sure our future is better, is a key part of
what these hearings are all about.
I'd like to also give thanks to Chair Joni Ernst, Senator
Ernst from Iowa, and Ranking Member Markey. Neither of them
could be here, but they signed off on this, and are supportive
of making sure that we take the Small Business and
Entrepreneurship Committee out into the country, and get all
the information we can.
Also want to talk to committee staff for the Small Business
Entrepreneurship Subcommittee, because they do the real work
and my own staff as well, who you guys have met, and spent
countless hours putting all this together. So, the committee
staff, our staff, it's a great partnership.
I've always been proud to represent small businesses in
Colorado. Up and down Main Street, we've had a wonderful--this
process of creating ecosystem that welcomes and celebrates
entrepreneurship, is something that we were very intentional
about, starting 20 years ago. And there are literally thousands
of people that own that, that have put time and effort and
created businesses, that prove that this not just the backbone
of our country, but it is the heart, it is the lungs, it is the
digestive system--I'll cut it off. [Laughter.]
Anyway, I came of age in small business. I started the
first brew pub in Colorado, my gosh, 1986. I don't even want to
say how old that is, that's almost 40 years ago. I guess it was
88 we finally got it open, it took me two years to open the
thing.
I understand a lot of the challenges that these guys are
facing. We were just in there talking about some of the
challenges that we're going to go over today. I lived a lot of
that; the anxiety that envelops real challenges when you're in
small business. And you know that each decision is not the last
decision, it's a decision that's going to either make things a
little better or maybe a little worse, if you don't get the
right decision, and you don't have time to sit and think about
it. You've got to keep making the decision, keep moving your
business forward.
Our small businesses are economic boosters to our rural
communities, to our urban communities, our suburban
communities. They improve healthcare, they drive innovation,
they create jobs, they improve our education system.
Here in Colorado, if you just look at the outdoor
recreation industry, we're talking in excess of $17 billion of
the state's, GDP. And there are some people that think that's
conservative. We're in a time now with this notion of tariffs,
where I think those policies threaten many of our small
businesses, not all, but many, many of our small businesses.
And I think the more we can hear those stories, and
recognize you know--I've talked to people in the trade office
and I've talked to other Republican Senators, I'm not sure I've
ever seen a place where the types of tariffs that have been
discussed, were effective. These large mass scale tariffs that
have been contemplated, not just for China, but even for NATO--
our allies. This is the kind of tariff environment that we saw
when I was a kid in the '60s and '70s. South American
countries, other developing countries, used similar tariffs to
try and protect--they wanted to limit their imports, and they
wanted to push forward and hope to stimulate their own
indigenous industry, and it never worked.
They ended up with spiraling inflation and interest rates.
Basically, there was a freezing that took place in their entire
economy. So as their economy stagnated, the value of their
currency, whatever it was, would diminish. And I think we face
the same things here. We're going to look at weakening the
dollar. And at the same time, all the uncertainty is, this
making people hesitate and, in many cases, put off any
significant decision. They won't commit to a purchase or a new
project because of all the uncertainty.
I think these guys, all small businesses, want to focus on
serving their customers. But having to navigate the chaos we
see right now is a real challenge. And I think the tariffs are
a blunt instrument. I understand where they're coming from, but
I think there are better ways we can deal with this. Certainly,
the people that are going to elegant dinners in Mar-a-Lago or
anywhere, this isn't as much an issue for them. But many small
businesses are really caught up in this storm and struggling to
survive.
Along with my Senate colleagues, we introduced the Small
Business Liberation Act, which would exempt small businesses
like these from these reckless tariffs. Again, we've been
pushed back on that and on and so many things.
Last week, we had Kelly Loeffler, who's the Administrator
for the Small Business Administration. She was talking about
how the tariffs really were good news for small businesses. But
I think I've been going around the state this whole week, and
I've talked to a dozen small businesses and haven't heard
anyone say that yet, that they look at this as any kind of a
benefit.
The recent CNBC survey, only 30 percent of our small
business owners believe our economy's heading in the right
direction. 70 percent felt that our economy is heading towards
a recession. They think the country is going the wrong
direction. We haven't seen pessimism like this since COVID,
which was a global pandemic, obviously. But I think that we are
on the precipice of a recession, and it could be a serious
recession. And the losses we will all endure will be
structural, in other words, they will have a long tail.
Obviously, tariffs aren't the only challenges these guys
face. Many of the components of this bill that was passed in
the house, the budget bill, are also going to be structurally
challenging. There's a plan in there, it was pulled out, but
once they put something in, they pulled it out of this budget
bill, but it'll probably find its way back into something else.
But they had a plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of
public land. And once you start that, it's hard to say where
it's going to go, but it's certainly not going to go in a good
direction.
In that budget, it's hard not to see labor shortages.
They're reducing or eliminating a lot of the money used to
address climate change. It is a challenging time. Anyway, I'm
excited to be joined by these guys, if I'm any good, which is
debatable, but any good at this senate business, I'm going to
hopefully leave this today on an upbeat.
Because it took me two years to raise the money when I
first started Wynkoop, I couldn't get my own mother to invest.
[Laughter.]
But I always said, sometimes I'd have to get out of bed and
paint a smile on my face. I'd have to look in the mirror and
say, all right, let's go get them, because I've never succeeded
at anything that mattered, if it was really challenging, by
thinking I couldn't do it, or by thinking it would look like,
you know, it wasn't going to happen.
I loved talking to these guys for 20 minutes before we
started this. This panel of witnesses embodies that
determination and commitment that it takes for small businesses
to succeed.
Our first witness is Travis Campbell. He's the owner and
CEO of Eagle Creek, an adventure travel gear company that's
based in Steamboat Springs. It's a little unfair that he gets
to live in Steamboat Springs, and most of us don't. Prior to
his time at Eagle Creek, Mr. Campbell spent time at VF, working
at North Face and Smart Wall.
He's got a Bachelor's of Science in Civil Engineering from
Duke University, MBA from Northwestern. Which is where my wife
also went, to Duke. She did not study engineering, but she also
got an MBA from Northwestern.
Mr. Campbell. Fantastic.
Senator Hickenlooper. What a scary world. [Laughter.]
Next up, we have Mr. Mike Mojica, founder of Outdoor
Element, an adventure survival gear business based in
Englewood. Mr. Mojica spent the bulk of his career as a
mechanical engineer in aerospace, real engineer, I'm just
kidding, this is still real engineering. But he was a
mechanical engineer, before turning his small business dream
into a reality. And he had older degree, an engineering degree
from the University of Texas at Arlington.
And then, rounding out the group is Trent Bush, founder and
co-CEO of ARTILECT Studios, based here in Boulder. Mr. Bush
comes from a family of outdoor recreation entrepreneurs, and
has served in previous roles at Mountain Hardware, Black
Diamond Equipment, and Burton Snowboards. He has a degree from
the University of Colorado Boulder and started his first
business while a student in Boulder High School. I mean, is it
possible that boulder's always been a hotbed of
entrepreneurship? I think it is.
So, we'll start, with each one just about five minutes to
make your opening statement. We'll start with Mr. Campbell, and
I'll turn it over for five minutes for your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF MR. TRAVIS CAMPBELL, CEO, EAGLE CREEK STEAMBOAT
SPRINGS, COLORADO.
Mr. Campbell. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper. Appreciate
the opportunity to be here to testify today about the impacts
of the current trade and tariff policy on the outdoor
recreation economy.
As you said, my name's Travis Campbell. I'm the owner and
CEO of Eagle Creek, a small business. I'm based in Steamboat
Springs. This is our 50th anniversary as a business. My wife
and I, and a few others have been the owner of this business
for about four years now. As mentioned, we design and sell
adventure travel gear. We make most of our product primarily in
Indonesia, and then we sell it all over the world.
We're the kind of small business that America should be
proud of; we pay our taxes, we comply fully with our duties and
regulations, we strive to be a responsible employer, a
committed partner to our customers, and a steward of the
planet.
Yet in the wake of the newly announced tariffs or recently
announced tariffs, it feels as though our country is
systematically working against businesses like ours, raising
our cost dramatically while fueling consumer anxiety that
suppresses demand. And I'll make note that that demand is
global demand, not just demand in the U.S.
Eagle Creek in the vast majority of the $1.2 trillion
outdoor industry, which is responsible for 5 million American
jobs, depends on a complex global supply chain to manufacture
the highly technical products that we sell. These goods require
years of skill and specialization to produce and those
capabilities do not exist in the U.S., at any level of scale
required to make the goods that we produce. Building that
capacity would take domestically years, if it were even
possible to do.
When the reciprocal tariffs were announced on April 2nd, we
had as a business, we had about $1.8 million of purchase orders
outstanding, due to ship into the U.S. in the next four months.
Under our normal processes, we would pay about $260,000 in
traditional duties and tariffs on that. And that cost is built
into our business model that's existed for a while.
When we did the math on the incremental tariffs, the new
bill would be an additional $580,000. And so, if for a business
our size, we don't have $580,000 sitting in our bank account
just waiting to pay that extra. And so that's a kind of shock
that is simply unsustainable for a business like us. What we
say is, in our 50th year of operations, we could be possibly
put out of business through these kind of ill-conceived tariff
plans.
Eagle Creek immediately took dramatic steps to stay afloat.
We froze salary increases that we had just implemented to our
teams. We halted the hiring of two really exceptional new
people that we planned to bring on board. We cut spending
across the board--so on vendors, on travel, on investments that
we were making in growing our business this year. We've revised
our sales forecast significantly lower for the year. So back to
that global consumer decline in demand that we see going on.
And so, when you add that all up; lower wages, fewer jobs, and
less spending in the economy, I don't think that's what we're
aiming for.
So, the current pause in tariff implementation does give us
some breathing room. But I would say only barely. And I'll go a
little off script here and say, this week there was a court
injunction, I'll say around the tariffs that have changed the
scenario again since I submitted my testimony three days ago.
And so, I find it remarkable that today I actually have no idea
what the tariffs are on my goods. And so, as a small business,
to have no idea what primary input costs look like in your
business, is terrifying and chaotic.
So, the uncertainty and instability continue to wreak havoc
on our business. I think it's important to note it's wreaking
havoc on our people. Like our teams are tired. You know, this
is a stressful environment. We're asking a lot out of people to
essentially plan and replan our business, what feels like
almost daily. And so, it's a constant struggle to not have a
view on what's going to happen and either tomorrow or let's
call it July 9th.
So, it's important to understand that our outdoor products
are not interchangeable with general consumer goods. These are
technical complex items built to withstand extreme conditions.
There's very little of U.S. manufacturing to support that. Yet
technical goods are among the most heavily taxed imports we
bring into the U.S. So, the trade weighted duty average for
outdoor gear is over 14 percent, compared to just 2.7 percent
for other consumer goods. Products like waterproof backpacks
and footwear are especially hard hit.
Historically, the outdoor industry has had bipartisan,
congressionally-approved tools like the Generalized System of
Preferences, GSP, and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bills, MTB, to
provide relief for products that aren't made in the U.S. But
both programs expired at the end of 2020.
Since then, the outdoor industry has paid over $2 billion
in duties that were not accounted for when sourcing decisions
were made years ago. Eagle Creek alone has paid over $4 million
in additional tariffs since 2020. If we had that $4 million
back, we would be in a much better position to weather this
current trade storm.
This is not just a matter of cost--it's about
predictability in our businesses. Our production cycles last
summer between 12 and 24 months, and so right now we're in the
process of planning our spring 27 season. So, if you think
about that, it takes a long time to change suppliers, to shift
operations. You need a lot of capital to make that happen, and
you need certainty to make that happen. We can't adapt
overnight to rapidly changing policy.
So let me be clear, U.S. importers pay the taxes on
tariffs. Those taxes are not paid by foreign countries. They're
paid by small businesses like ours. And with many businesses
still recovering from COVID-era disruptions, we simply did not
have the financial cushion to absorb these shocks.
So, what are our options? We can go to our supply chain
partners and ask for discounts, which we've done. Generally, if
you could get a 10 percent discount out of a factory, you'd be
feeling really great about that. At the end of the day, that
makes a very small dent in the incremental tariff bills that
we're dealing with.
Our other option is to increase prices to our consumers,
which if anybody's studied economics, when you raise prices,
demand goes down traditionally. And so, it becomes this vicious
cycle and it's not ultimately a sustainable path forward for
anyone in this industry.
So, I'm here today to ask for leadership. Small businesses
like mine cannot fix this alone. We need long-term stable trade
policies that recognize the realities of modern supply chains,
not punitive tariffs, and uncertainties. We need programs like
GSP and MTB restored, to give businesses like ours the tools to
survive and grow.
The outdoor industry stands ready to work with the
committee, with the Senate, Congress. Our company is prepared
to be part of the solution. But let me be very clear, what's
happening right now is not working. And thank you for your
time. Appreciate the time and happy to answer any questions
when the time comes.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell follows.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Hickenlooper. Great. I appreciate that, and thank
you. You summed it up pretty nicely. Now we'll hear from Mike
Mojica. Your five minutes begins.
STATEMENT OF MR. MIKE MOJICA, FOUNDER, OUTDOOR ELEMENT,
ENGLEWOOD, COLORADO
Mr. Mojica. Senator Hickenlooper and distinguished guest
and friends and family, thank you for this opportunity to speak
with you today.
Again, my name's Mike Mojica. I was born on an Army base in
Nurnberg, Germany where I saw my father salute, all shades of
skin and all shades of skin salute him back. And that imagery
has always stuck with me my entire life. It taught me what this
great country is all about unity, opportunity, and the
confidence to chase dreams with grit and courage. This country,
while not perfect, has long inspired dreamers and doers, and I
consider myself one of them.
By education, I'm a mechanical engineer, as you mentioned.
For years, I had the honor of designing for the U.S. Army and
the Air Force. In 2012, I had the opportunity of moving to
Colorado, where I rediscovered the outdoors, and I started
something on the side; Outdoor Element. My native name is
Bodaway, which means fire maker. And that sparked turned into a
mission-creating rugged, innovative gear that helps people
explore with confidence themed around fire.
About seven and a half years ago I left my stable job in
aerospace to go all in with Outdoor Element. I've gone through
accelerator programs with Moosejaw and REI. I've secured 10
patents, I have a few pending, and we just came off our best
year ever. And then a couple of months ago happened. Overnight
tariffs on our core products jumped to 145 percent. That's not
a misstatement. What felt like a mood swing for my commander-
in-chief now feels like a knife in the back.
What I thought was an approachable path to the American
dream has suddenly turned into quicksand. We are now down to 30
percent additional tariffs, 10 for reciprocal and 20 for
fentanyl--fentanyl, I'm paying the price for a crime I did not
commit. I'm just here in my quicksand drowning a little slower.
We had to pause production, tell our factories to simply
hold the goods and not ship them. And what I am shipping is to
fulfill wholesale pre-orders. I'm doing little or no profit.
I'm doing it to keep relationships alive. I've lost a wholesale
account, a key wholesale account right now, because we had
slightly increased our prices.
I had to lay off some team members. I've asked others to
work less hours. My wife now works for free, indefinitely. My
kids who are here today, they help me pack out orders. And I
don't mean this to be a pity party or pity story. I'm here not
to scream or yell. In fact, my spiritual mentor said, ``Anger,
never persuades. Hostility builds no one and contention never
leads to inspired solutions.'' So, I'm here for a plea of
conversation of clarity. Let's come together. Let's be
inspired.
I understand that we operate in a global economy. It's
complex, but small businesses like mine cannot plan for success
when the rules change overnight, again and again without
warning, without clear strategy or line of communication.
This country's supposed to build and promote small
businesses and not crush them. I'm not asking for a handout;
I'm asking for a plan. I'm asking for transparency that
inspires confidence. Chairman Mike Crapo recently said, ``Trade
is supposed to provide businesses with the certainty we need to
make long-term investments to drive growth.'' And I couldn't
agree more. Today, that certainty it's missing. I'm no longer
thriving. I'm working on surviving.
In the past, I've tried to reach out to leadership at USTR
doing the 301 punitive tariffs, and it just fell in deaf ears.
I'd welcome a conversation from Ambassador Jamieson Greer.
Let's forge a path that's smarter together. One that doesn't
treat small businesses as collateral damage, but rather invites
the small businesses as an important part of the economic
equation, part of the economic solution.
Ambassador Greer also said recently that he wants what's
best for America. My question is, what part of America? Do I
need to be building microchips or being in the auto industry to
matter? The acts of my government indicate that I currently
don't matter.
Right now, my food, my fuel, shelter, cost a little bit
more. Profit margin has gone down and that's just not
sustainable. Not for me, not for hundreds of other outdoor
small brands facing the same uncertainty.
Now, I've begun to shift production outside of China, and
where we can we proudly build here in the U.S., like our newest
fire-starting product, Fiber Light. But that's a journey, not a
switch, that anyone can just flip on.
And I also believe this, that international commerce
promotes peace. It's not a new idea. In the 18 hundreds French
economist Frederic Bastiat, he said this, ``If goods don't
cross borders, soldiers will.'' Phil Knight echoed this same
idea in his memoir saying that Nike would rather build boots in
Vietnam than see combat boots there. And I agree. So, for every
international purchase order that we place, that's my vote for
peace and partnership, not conflict. Collaboration over
conflict is where I stand. So, let's use our forum policy to
foster a bridge that we've spent decades building.
Outdoor Element was born from a spark--literally. We
designed survival and adventure gear themed around fire that
helps people explore the great outdoors with confidence. But
behind every piece of gear are real people, families, teams,
communities, friends.
If you are a believer in our gear, thank you. If you light
fires on cold nights with our firebiners or a scout feather
knife or simply believe in small business, you are part of my
equation, you are part of my story. So, thank you for that.
To this committee, please don't forget or undermine small
scrappy companies who form the backbone of America. Let's build
our futures one spark at a time and keep the fire going. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mojica follows.]
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Senator Hickenlooper. Well said, well said. Mr. Bush,
you're up.
STATEMENT OF MR. TRENT BUSH, FOUNDER AND CO-CEO, ARTILECT
STUDIO, BOULDER, COLORADO
Mr. Bush. Great. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper. My name
is Trent Bush, and my life has revolved around Colorado outdoor
industry since my childhood. Growing up, my dad was one of the
first employees at Boulder-based Frostline Kids, which was an
innovative outdoor brand that started in the '60s and lasted
through the '70s and early '80s.
Frostline enabled countless American families, from diverse
economic backgrounds, to enjoy the outdoors affordably, making
their jackets, sleeping bags, tents, and packs at home, since
back then most American households actually had sewing machines
and knew how to use them.
Unfortunately, market conditions dramatically shifted in
the early '80s and Frostline, along with other Boulder-based
innovators like Holubar, Gerry, and Altra, became obsolete as
competitors leveraged overseas manufacturing to deliver
finished products, that significantly lower costs with no
sewing necessary.
In the mid-80s, I started my own career at Wave Rave, which
was a really small snowboard shop in Boulder where I'm from.
Although we initially produced our own jackets and pants
locally, our limitations started to become apparent when
competing brands began to source their products overseas,
bringing a new level of quality and performance that we
couldn't achieve ourselves.
At Boulder High in 1989, my brother, a friend, and I
decided to launch our own brand called Twist. We were
determined to produce domestically at that time because even
though it was harder, that's what we believed in, and that's
what we knew from my prior generation. We soon outgrew
Colorado's limited capabilities and moved to the Bay Area
aiming to utilize factories abandoned by large American outdoor
brands that were already offshoring at that time.
At just a few million dollars in sales, Twist lacked the
scale to sustain these factories, and they quickly shuttered,
forcing us to try to move our goods to Los Angeles factories,
which were more accustomed to producing Halloween costumes and
denim jeans, rather than technical outerwear.
Without the necessary specialized equipment or solar sewers
available, our products faced severe quality issues. The
waterproof coating failed on our U.S. sourced fabrics, snaps
fell off, the seams leaked, and even back then, the know-how
had already moved on. Ultimately, survival forced us to move
our manufacturing overseas, but it was too little, too late,
and we ended up pretty much losing everything at that point.
And that was way back in the nineties. US-Based performance
apparel manufacturing capabilities have only really decreased
since that time. Definitely not increased.
I know this is true because after Twist, the past 30 years
of my career have evolved around senior roles and design and
development, for global performance brands, as mentioned, like
Burton Spyder, Oakley, Outdoor Research, Mountain Hardware,
Black Diamond Equipment, and my most recent startup, ARTILECT.
At each of these brands, we actually did make sincere
efforts and attempts to reshore partial production, but most of
those have actually ended in costly failures with only basic
products like t-shirts, socks, those kinds of things being
successful.
Today at ARTILECT, we create innovative high performance
merino wool apparel in Vietnam, because domestic production
remains impossible due to the lack of merino sheep, specialized
yarns equipment and infrastructure.
And because of those reasons, and even with the interest of
U.S. military, we can't comply with the Berry Amendment because
the necessary domestic supply chain simply doesn't exist, and
it leaves our brand without a valuable business opportunity,
and it actually leaves our military with substandard equipment.
While the post COVID outdoor market has already been harder
than any that I've ever faced in my entire career, our entire
industry faces new unprecedented crisis, amplified by recent
U.S. tariff policies. For a small wholesale-focused business
like ours, these tariffs dramatically inflate landed product
costs, forcing us to either to raise retail prices or accept
significantly diminished margins, or most likely both.
Our retail partners can't absorb these price increases
without reducing their orders significantly, and their
customers are unable to pay more, endangering both their own
businesses and ours at the same time.
Additionally, these tariffs severely undermine ongoing
industry efforts towards greater equity and inclusion, making
outdoor participation much more expensive and illusive.
Even if Tuesday's ruling against the tariff stands, the
uncertainty of U.S. trade policies have also sparked anti-
American sentiment in our foreign markets, causing outright
rejection of American brands, and severely damaging our global
competitiveness.
This is all super hard for me personally. I held onto
producing in the U.S. as long as I possibly could, and I feel
I've done everything I was asked to do since, including moving
production out of China six years ago. Now, even those
staggeringly high tariffs outside China may force my business
to close. This just isn't the American dream I believed in, and
I've tried so hard over all those years to achieve. The rules
keep changing and we just can't keep up.
So, I respectfully urge Congress to reconsider these
policies that cripple small outdoor businesses like mine,
recognizing the unintended damage they're causing. Thank you
sincerely for your time, consideration, and thoughtful
understanding. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bush follows.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, all three of you. I think
those are so distinct and yet compelling and some of the
calculus you have to use, and no matter how good you are at
your business, if you have to raise your prices three or 4
percent, that doesn't mean you're going to lose three or 4
percent of sales. You don't know what you're going to lose, at
what point that people feel they can't afford what you're
selling. And you can raise your prices 3 percent and lose 10
percent of your sales. And I think I heard variations of that
through each of you.
I'm going to go back up and forth and ask a bunch of
questions. I'll start with you Trent, just because you spoke
last. You've obviously had quite a career across a number of
apparel brands. You've obviously been diligently working
towards American Made in every way you could. And I think as
you said, we share that desire to get all America, but there's
no switch that you can flip. It really is a journey, as one of
you said.
You said there's a lack of merino wool supply, is one thing
in terms of necessary machinery available. Maybe go a little
further in detail, the infrastructure, labor, technology, if
you want to bring all of your manufacturing state side. I mean,
you can summarize it. You don't go through too much of the
details. If you ask a true entrepreneur a question like this,
you could be here for an hour. But what would that do? Just
kind of run through that. What would that do to the cost for
your consumer?
Mr. Bush. Well, first of all, it wouldn't be possible even
if I wanted to. Okay. The Merino sheep in meaningful quantities
only grow in the Merino band, which is Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa, Argentina. There's a certain latitude where
Merino can be raised in meaningful numbers.
Machinery wise, and we were actually joking, sort of in the
green room before, that there's only one in Denver as far as I
know. There's only one Ralph sewing machine. I don't know if
they're still even here, but there's one place you can actually
buy sewing machines, industrial sewing machines.
Senator Hickenlooper. That's for the whole region?
Mr. Bush. That's for the whole region, kind of for the
mountain west. And they're the only people that can actually
even service them. And it's not just about, you know, having
people who know what they're doing, people who know how to sew,
and people who know how to sew at a very high level. To be
efficient, it means having the machinery, it means having the
trajectory of innovation in the machinery side. That again, all
that left the U.S. decades ago.
And so, you know, not to go into every little detail, it
actually isn't possible. And that's kind of what I mentioned
with the military thing. We were working with the U.S. 10
special forces and they really liked our product and that kind
of thing, but we can't be very compliant. And our technology,
especially with the yarns that we use, a process called New
Yarn, those machines do not exist in the U.S. to even make the
yarns. So even if we had the rest of them, the machines don't
exist here. So, it's a losing equation.
I think the last thing I would say is, we can do a much
better job as a business, when you talk two or 3 percent raise,
we're talking 20 or 30 percent raise in most cases, from a cost
perspective. And that's all money that we'd literally pay to
nobody, right? Or to our government, right?
I would rather spend every one of those dollars on a high
paying job here in the U.S., because all of those dollars will
go to marketing, they'll go to sales, they'll go to
distribution, all the things that we need to support, instead
of paying a low wage, so sewing job, I think that's a much
better way to spend those dollars, right?
Senator Hickenlooper. And that 10 or 20 percent largely at
least in this situation, is going to go--some chunk of it will
go to tax breaks for very, very wealthy people, many of whom
don't want the tax breaks. That's the one thing that never
really comes out. I've talked to a dozen, or maybe not quite a
dozen, but very wealthy people in Colorado and asked them about
these budgets in the tax cut. Most of them go, you know, you're
really wealthy, a couple hundred thousand dollars, which sounds
enormous to the rest of us. They're like, no, not if that's
going to hurt people like yourselves.
Mr. Mojica, I understand exactly what, as you were
describing that small business anxiety and challenge to juggle
all the problems. And one thing I remember vividly was when you
have something inserted into your world that demands a certain
amount of your attention, everything else gets diminished. In
other words, you're not doing everything else that you are
accustomed to doing in order to grow and thrive.
So as is, tariffs have rendered your business uncertain in
the short term. How have you found, or have you been able to
find enough time, to do the growth and to thrive as you want?
How much of your time, I guess as a percentage is what I'm
asking, are you having put towards navigating this intrusion
that the tariffs are creating for your business?
Mr. Mojica. Great question. I don't know if I can give you
exact percentage, but I know that there's been lots of
sleepless nights and just staying in the office wondering like,
how am I going to make the ends meet? Gratefully, I have an
awesome support family that comes in and starts packing
packages and learning different parts of the business. I didn't
know I needed to be a tariff expert when I started this
business. [Laughter.]
But it's definitely something we learned to navigate. I'll
say that all of us here, I think we, the beauty of America is
we get to choose our own hard, right? And it's like working an
eight to five is hard. But I chose this hard, and I'm willing
to accept the obstacles that comes with it. Now, I feel like
this is kind of a curve ball that I didn't expect to see, and
so I'm trying to learn how to navigate.
I'm a part of a couple of entrepreneurial support
networking groups, and I found that it's like reaching out and
sometimes we share each other's pity party just to get it off
our chest. Like, okay, it's time to move on. But it's been a
struggle, the struggles are real. If I had to guess, probably
30 percent of my time is just trying to understand, reading
articles about like, what could happen next, what's the
ramification?
I was reaching out to a broker yesterday, trying to figure
out what the taxes or the tariffs are. I have something coming
in right now and I'm like, hey, what am I paying? I don't know.
You know, like, what does this mean? And so, it's the
uncertainty. It's hard to create a business plan around when
you have a big ball of uncertainty. And that's what's driving
me crazy. That's why I want a plan that, just inspires like, we
have something stable, let's move forward. And what I don't see
is anything stable. It's a disaster.
Senator Hickenlooper. Yes. Well, and that's, so much of
small business is based on assumptions. And you've got to have
a fairly good set of assumptions to make sure that the things
you don't know, like, what are my sales going to be, is there
going to be some weather event or something that's going to
come out of the blue? But when almost everything is up in the
air, that I think you all three of you talked to that that
point.
Mr. Campbell, I want to switch gears for just a minute.
Obviously, there's so many threats that are facing the outdoor
recreation industry right now. We're seeing drastic cuts to
pretty much every federal enterprise that manages our public
lands. And these are large unsustainable cuts. I don't think
you can argue that.
And whether you're talking about national parks or national
forests and all those recreational opportunities, this
transition away from responsibility that the federal government
has historically always exhibited around our public lands, I
see as a genuine threat.
They're even talking about taking some of our smaller
national parks and turning them over to states, without a plan,
without any guidelines or accountability. Obviously, they've
fired or forced out thousands of employees from, not just the
National Park Service in our parks, and they're all going to be
down 10, 20 percent. Who knows what the bathroom conditions
will be. Although I think everyone should still go to our
National Parks. You need that time and a beautiful place to get
restored these days.
But U.S. Forest Service, the campgrounds, the fish, and
wildlife, I mean, how we take care of our habitats in the
original budget bill that was taken out, but there was a part
of that bill that was going to sell off over 500,000 acres of
public lands mostly in Nevada but also in Utah.
And that should be sobering, because once you begin that
process, you've taken an absolutely in violent line that we've
never crossed, of selling off, letting the executive branch
sell off public lands. And suddenly that line no longer exists
and is blurred.
So, I want to--because your business really does directly
bear on this, but also your business and the industry as a
whole. How dependent are you on safe, accessible, protected
public lands?
Mr. Campbell. Yeah, I mean, I would say wholly dependent.
You know, as the outdoor industry, I can't speak for everyone,
but we think of public lands as the core infrastructure of our
business, in the same way that like, machines might be the
infrastructure of a steel manufacturer, public lands are the
infrastructure of the outdoor industry.
And so, you know, from my lens, outdoor industry has been
growing, thriving for years. The demands on our public lands
have been increasing. We actually have way more demand than we
have supply today of public lands. So, to me, it's actually
sort of antithetical, right? We should be buying more public
lands because there's the demand to justify that as a country.
And frankly, more public lands or better maintained public
lands, either of those would be an investment in the health of
this industry.
And I already said in my testimony, $1.2 trillion of
economic activity for the country, 500 million U.S. jobs, like
you know, I'm a business person. If I see that kind of growth
and opportunity in energy, I want to invest behind that, not
tear it down and sell it off.
And so, there's no question that even the conversation
about diminished staffing in the parks or BLM campgrounds being
closed, are going to decrease demand. You know, a big part of
our international tourism, bringing it back to my business
which is dependent on travel, and global travel, like lots of
people come from outside the U.S. specifically to visit our
national parks and our public spaces.
And the quality of the experience they have in doing that
directly relates to whether people are going to come the next
time and how much money they're going to spend while they're
here. And so, from my lens again, very much shooting ourselves
in the foot in terms of economic activity.
Senator Hickenlooper. Yeah, I'm sure each would've a
version of that same response. Mr. Bush, I'll come back to you,
Trent. I call him Mr. Bush or Trent. I go back and forth, Trent
Mike, you go whatever. Trent, everyone in this room knows that
the benefits in outdoor recreation go far beyond just the
immediate activity that you're engaged in and beyond just the
economic measure--of economic impact.
You know, when I first did my first summer field work, when
I was getting my master's in geology, studied volcanic rocks
north of Yellowstone Park. So, I went out for a whole summer,
two years in a row. And that first summer I would go out for 10
days at a time and then come back in and go to a place called
Chico Hot Springs and have a great meal. And then I would go
and take a shower, meal first.
When I came back to where I was in school in Connecticut, a
little small school there and my father had died when I had
just turned eight. And it was my mother's second husband who
passed away, so no one really talked about my dad. But the one
thing that was good about all that, it was a dark period, but
we didn't have to go to Sunday school. We didn't have to go to
church.
And it's funny, I came back from that first summer in the
high of--in the Beartooth wilderness. And without even
thinking, I started going to church. And I think that's
something that we don't often, or don't always consider, is
that the other benefits of being outside and into wilderness
are profound.
And it improves public health, obviously hiking, the
exercise, climbing, but also combats loneliness. It diminishes
anxiety, reduces stress. Many parts of Europe now, doctors
prescribe an hour, you know, three times a week, taking a walk
in the woods. In many cases though, the cost of the gear even
for basic access is a barrier.
And so, you brought up Travis, Trent, sorry, the TRs, those
who were dyslexic did not set up this line. [Laughter.]
Trent, you brought this, the tariffs are causing economic
uncertainty, but it's also rising costs, I think undermine our
efforts to create more access. And again, there's a price point
for everything. And if we really believe this is a public
health situation, that becomes a valuable equation.
So, Trent, can you speak a little bit about the benefits of
getting more folks outside from the industry perspective, and
how these costs could affect more people getting access to the
outdoors?
Mr. Bush. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. You know, I
think just to pull it all the way back to the most important
benefits of being outside, there's probably no real--it's hard
to look at a graph maybe of the rise of our mental health
crisis in the U.S. and things like phones, right? The more
people have been on social media doing whatever, the less that
they're out in the outdoors. And I think that that is
something--I think those are totally hand in hand.
Being in the outdoors resets you, it resets everybody I've
ever met. We have in my family alone, we have struggles with
anxiety and depression and things like that. And the times that
those are not as apparent as maybe they would be otherwise, are
when we're outside. I mean, anybody that tries to go skiing or
snowboarding, something like that in Colorado, it's already
prohibitively expensive for a huge part of the population.
These policies have not made that less expensive or made
access easier. You talked about selling off public lands,
that's less of a place for us to be, to reset our clocks and
reset ourselves and, you know, maybe not go to church, but that
could be a church for a lot of us. So, you know, you can't even
put a measure on how important that access is to the health and
welfare of people and all of these, everything that we're doing
right now is totally antithesis of that happening.
Senator Hickenlooper. Right. I agree.
Mr. Mojica. May I add to that?
Senator Hickenlooper. Sure.
Mr. Mojica. This is part of my origin story here.
[Laughter.]
Me discovering the outdoors again. So, I'm a Texas defect,
you know, hopefully you're okay with that, guys. God bless
Texas. But I discovered Colorado and just amazing things
happened. So, the year I started Outdoor Element, I had moved
up to Aurora area and my neighbor's like, hey, Mike, you want
to go hike a fourteener? And I was like, yes, let's do it. And
then I said, what's a fourteener? Right? I had no idea what
that meant. And he explained the altitude thing. And we did
Mount Yale.
And we did hike mount Yale and two things happened to me on
that hike. One, I met a young lady, she was hiking down. She
went up for a Sunrise summit and she was coming down, I was
coming up, we just passed tree line, and she was like, all
hobbling. And I was the weird guy that got right in front of
her room, like, hey, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with
you? And she's like, I rolled my ankle, obviously, you know,
get out of my way. And I know. So, I sat her down and I had
first aid kit and took off her boot, and I wrapped her up and
sent her on her way.
And then when I got to the top, I was with like three other
guys. And I'm small, but I feel like I'm a strong dude. I'm a
man, right? I got to the top and I'm like, why do I want to cry
right now? And like, I had my little Moses moment, if you will.
And I'm just like, I'm going to look over here guys because I
can't hold my emotions together. And it was just like, it was
this beautiful, peaceful, revelatory moment in my life.
And I came down with two lessons. It was like, hey, let's
be prepared. I feel like fire is a lifesaver, so I built it
around my native name Bodaway. And then let's get outdoors
more. Let's get in touch with these beautiful moments in life
that we just have the landscape for here in Colorado, but this
can happen anywhere.
In addition, one of my kids suffered from anxiety as well,
and we went through therapy, and then we discovered the Tetons.
We went camping for nine days and just throwing rocks in a lake
like cured my daughter. It was just like this beautiful thing.
So, you're right, it's unmeasurable. Like we need the outdoors.
Like, don't take this away from us.
Senator Hickenlooper. Right? Well put, well put. Mr.
Campbell, you, or Travis. You mentioned having to freeze salary
increases and pull them back. You were going to hire two
people, cut spending every way you could to try and make up for
the tariff expenditures. I thought the part also, when you're
doing that, at the same time, you're revising your forecast
down. You know, when your numbers are down across the board,
that's the hardest, I think.
Are there other long-term implications, let's just
specifically talk about staffing. Are you losing or potentially
going to lose long-term employees that in many ways become
irreplaceable?
Mr. Campbell. Yes. My hope is that we don't lose any more
employees fundamentally, that we find a way to navigate our way
through this in a way that doesn't cost more roles for us.
You know, you had mentioned long tail consequences from
this disruption, somewhere along the way. And I think there's
lots of long tail consequences to this, like lots of the
damage, even if we like, snap our fingers and tariffs go back
to their normal levels you know, at some level we've scared the
global consumer. We've already at some level damaged our
businesses through just like this level of disruption.
Like a good example is we've paused some of the product
introductions that we were planning to do over the next six to
12 months, because just for a variety of reasons that didn't
make sense to bring in the inventory and have the risk. And so,
you know, again, if we snapped our fingers in this resolve
today, our business will actually deal with the implications of
this for probably 18 more months at a minimum.
And our industry is built on innovation. People like Mike
who have these amazing ideas for the next great product. And
same with Trent, right? Like, building this incredible product
that we want to be bringing to market. And these are complex,
long timeline things, like I said earlier. And so, there's
going to be an implication to that innovation pipeline because
people have frozen those investment choices.
And so, whether it ends up costing our businesses more
people, it probably will. We're sort of, I think in our
business, destined to have a bad sales year, there's not much
that we can do to change that at this point. It's really about
how do we plan for the next year and the next year and try and
make sure that we get out of this cycle as quickly as we can.
But I think it gets lost in a lot of this, right? Because
we're so focused on right in front of our faces right now
because the tariffs are so immediate. I think that long tail
impact for it's going to ripple out for a long period of time.
So, the faster that we can resolve this, the better we can move
through.
Senator Hickenlooper. Yes. Mike, let me come back to you
and then I'll have a question for all of you. We'll work
towards this. Mike, you've talked a lot about, you've been part
of trying to be the solution. You reached out to officials;
you're trying to collaborate, which will get you into trouble,
that's how I first got into the government. [Laughter.]
And I think your willingness to share your experiences and
to collaborate is really important. Phasing out manufacturing
in China, manufacturing domestically wherever as much as
possible. But again, you've had to shift from thriving to
surviving.
What would you suggest to Congress? And you actually all
can chime in on this. What would you suggest that Congress and
the Administration could do to ensure the small businesses
aren't left behind in these discussions? Small businesses of
all stripes? Right now, we're just talking about outdoor
recreation, but I think we're probably at that point where we
need to start thinking about a structural process or solution
that we can say, all right, this isn't going to solve it
tomorrow, but this is something down the road. What's your
response to that?
Mr. Mojica. I think we're doing it right now, by you
inviting us to the table and having an open conversation is, I
think, critical to find a good solution. To feel like I have a
voice, to feel like I'm heard, is for me it's volumes.
Now love for--see some policy change. And I know it's a
complex system, you know, I'm hoping, why couldn't there be a
threshold for exclusions for either top line or number of
employees, or if you're doing something for the environment.
Like we work with a lot of recycled materials and we're trying
to single use plastics from our packaging. There's like all
these little things that are like, hey, this could be a viable
solution. I have these ideas; I want to share them with
someone. And just, you know, Katherine Tai never answered her
messages and, you know, and so I'm just like, who can I speak
to?
So, I was more than excited to get a phone call. I think
Connor Hall's the one who texted me and said, hey, let's have a
conversation and then got me on this panel. So, thank you, sir.
But I think the biggest thing is like, let's, make it real,
let's turn this, not companies, as like a dollar sign, but as
people, like who hire employees who often use family as
employees. And if we're going to be the collateral damage
because of that, I think it changes the equation when you see
us as people and not just as a transaction, right? Well, this
needs to be a relationship.
I feel like Stephen, I think is--``It's like everything
happens at the speed of relationships.'' Like have a
relationship with small business, call us up. Like we want to
be heard. I don't know who to call. I'll email, text, and tweet
or whatever. And it's like, it just falls on deaf ears. But
having this moment, I feel like is a sign of progress, in my
opinion.
Senator Hickenlooper. Right?
Mr. Bush. Yes. I mean, I would just say maybe this is a--do
your research before you act. Because if the goal, or one of
the goals that I've heard of sort of all this tariff thing was
to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Make sure that it can
happen before you make it impossible for anything to happen for
us.
I could have told you, obviously if somebody would've
called, told them that there is nowhere to make those products.
You were talking about, trying to make a dog leash, your
daughter. Locally, you can't even make something that simple
here right now. So do the research before you kind of turn off
our lifelines, I would say.
Senator Hickenlooper. Yes.
Mr. Campbell. Those are great answers. I mean, I think I
would say something similar to what Mike said. Small businesses
are by their nature small and fragmented. And so, it's hard for
us to speak as a collective voice. So, scenarios like this are
what allow us to somewhat speak with a collective voice. And
your committee allows that at some level. And so, you know,
we'll never be able to hire lobbyists to be able to get access
that the larger companies can pay for. And so, any
opportunities like this where we can come together and use our
voices and humanize our businesses is just super valuable.
Senator Hickenlooper. I'll never take any campaign
donations from those large corporations either. Last question.
We were in the green room, a couple of you touched on this, but
I do think it's interesting that within the tariff conversation
there is other international negotiation and drama. And I
wanted to ask each of you, because you all have international
customers as we talked about.
Have you seen people, and you can say both retail and
wholesale customers who are saying, we can't do business with
the United States anymore because of whatever. There's I'm sure
multiple, you don't have to go into details, but is that
something that's also part of the challenge and is it one or 2
percent or is it for your business, you know, five to 10
percent or just kind of again, run down on that?
Mr. Campbell. I mean, I can give a quick answer. I couldn't
put a percentage on it. We always think from a customer service
standpoint, when we hear from one person, there's at least 10
others, right? Like there's a heuristic idea of if somebody
takes the time to call or send an email, then there's probably
at least 10 more people who feel the same way.
And so, I've gotten a number of emails from our friends up
in Canada, who've sent through and basically a note saying, I
love your product, I've used it for years and years and years,
I'm never buying another one. Sorry. And those are not the
emails you like to get. Right.
And so, I don't know how large of a scale that is. I know
Canadians in particular have been speaking with their wallet
and not traveling to the U.S. and so you know, that in a very
small way has a significant impact on our business.
Mr. Mojica. In my case, I feel like what's happened is I am
no longer fostering my international accounts where I should
be, because I'm trying to juggle, trying to learn how to deal
with the tariffs here. I got an email last week from our
Japanese distributor that says, hey, we never got this, your
new pricing structure. How does it look for international? I'm
like, whoa, that's a great question. So, I admittedly have not
done the analysis to update pricing for my international
accounts.
Some things will slip through the cracks when you're in
survival mode. And I feel like that's where I am, where I need
to take a step back and reanalyze and possibly like, get some
hired help, some part-time help. Like, hey, let's look at this.
I need someone smarter than me to come to the table and be
like, how do we orchestrate this, what's the step forward?
So yes, I feel like international accounts right now,--they
weren't the bulk of my business. We're talking like 5-8
percent. And because of that, where I wanted the plan was to
foster them this year, next year, it's on hold. And so, my
growths on hold and so is my R&D deck. Like I've been waiting
to like bring more things to the market and I had a few
customers say, hey, you showed me this R&D deck, like, when's
that coming out? I'm like, well, I put that on pause for a
while. So, I don't know yet. So, it's a lot of things are on
hold right now.
Mr. Bush. And we are different than a lot of brands,
especially kind of startup and small brands where we take a
little bit more of a wholesale approach. I've always really
believed retailers have done a great job building their
communities, and our job is to support their work with the end
consumer. That now has sort of ended up in a situation where
we're actually bigger in Europe, in Scandinavia than we are in
the U.S.
Mainly European marketplace typically is a little more
forward on buying on performance, sustainability, quality,
longevity, things like that. U.S. consumers or retailers, hype
and price are usually a big driver of a lot of things. because
it makes their job much easier to sell the product.
So, we're in a position right now where there's major anti-
American sentiment across the European Union, of course. And
there are Reddit pages. You can Google all this stuff and
really the boycotts on American outdoor brands in particular
from a consumer perspective. So, if those really take hold with
those bigger retailers we work with because we are focused on
retail relationships, then that'll be the end for us because we
are so heavily weighted in Europe right now.
Senator Hickenlooper. That sucks. Yes, it does. And I'll
finish. Just to the quick question. Because as a small business
person, we were always looking over our shoulder at the really
big companies and whether they were going to come into our
market and whether that direct competition--how we would
respond, were we ready? And obviously the restaurant business,
you always had some big box competition. But you guys all have
big competition as well, large companies.
And you know, it's similar, when Congress tried to regulate
the large banks after the fiasco, the financial crisis of 2009,
2010, who really got hurt were small banks. Because the really
large companies can tolerate these ups and downs and swings of
more regulation, they're large enough so they can more easily
spend or can accommodate the cost of five or 10 staff members
to deal with all this red tape.
I think in the same way, I haven't seen this written
around, thought about, but I think it is giving an undue
advantage to your large competitors because they've got more
space in their budget to deal with a tariff for six months or a
year and try and get through this while the process gets sorted
out. Am I thinking about that right? Why don't we go down the
line?
Mr. Campbell. Yes, you are. And sorry, I was getting ready
to--I was so excited to answer. [Laughter.]
I was in DC a couple weeks ago lobbying and speaking with
members of Congress. And one of the things that I heard from a
few offices was, just wait. This needs a few more months to
resolve.
And to get to your point, like most small businesses
actually don't have a few months to wait. Because again, we
don't have the balance sheet to absorb the losses over that
span of time. Whereas the big companies do, to your point.
If I'm a large company and it takes six months for this to
resolve, that's fine. You know, the bank will float them
through that window or they already have the assets on their
balance sheet to get through that window. But most small
businesses aren't structured with that level of reserves to
hang on, and so it does.
I talk a lot about the second order and third order effects
of these choices that we're dealing with, right? The first
order effects are pretty obvious, costs go up. But the second
and third order effects are exactly what you say, which is like
the competitive landscape changes based on capital structure
that you may have had or the scale of your business. And so,
this does in a strange way, put an advantage on the bigger
companies and the smaller companies are disadvantaged.
Mr. Mojica. I was slightly jealous when I read that, I
think it was Apple, shipped six tons of iPhones over, you know?
because I was like, wow, what kind of bank account do they
have? And it doesn't look like mine. [Laughter.]
And I think the irony too, is like having a conversation
about tariffs and international commerce is a good thing. And I
think in the end we may end up in a better spot, but how we're
getting there is crippling to small business. It is treating us
like collateral damage and I feel like a pawn in this game.
And for me I feel like we weren't considered in the
conference, like you're saying, like the research isn't there.
Like you were mentioning like my kids own a dog business,
selling leashes and we were trying to make it stateside and
essentially get ghosted by three companies. And so, we were
forced to go overseas, and then now I feel like we're penalized
for being overseas. And it's just like the game doesn't make
sense to me right now. And again, just to your point, I do feel
like there's an unfair advantage to the larger companies,
right?
Mr. Bush. Yes. We actually have a joke inside, that the big
brands have more daytime janitors than we have employees.
[Laughter.]
And it's because it's true. You know? And you see it in the
marketplace right now, if you look at some of the big brand
moves that have to happen because of these, whether they're
using an excuse or whether it's actually true, it's easy to
pull levers at scale. You can fire 400 people or lay off 400
people to make up for some of these issues. I can't do that.
We're bare bones as it is. So, we just can't do that. You know?
The other thing that from a brand perspective, competing
against much bigger brands, we can't just, especially with our
sort of wholesale strategy, we can't just shift more resources
to sort of the direct to consumer side, where there's a much
bigger margin, where much bigger brands could actually use this
as a pivot point to even sort of abandon those retailers
further and really take that attention towards building their
own consumer base and competing directly against the brands
that they sell to them right now.
So, there's a lot of things that are going to happen and
I'm interested actually to see where it ends up.
Senator Hickenlooper. Well, I think in a funny way, and I
know a number, I have a good relationship with a number of
Republican senators. This is not their intention. They do not
intend, to not only put pressure and in many cases, going to
drive out of business, small enterprises. And if that business
will get swooped up by the big companies, they won't have to
spend any money. It'll be, low hanging fruit.
And the injustice of that, I don't think was intended by
any Republican senator that I know. And hopefully we can begin
moving now that the tariffs have been put on hold and kind of
pushed aside. Maybe that becomes the default, that's what's
going to be, that 10 percent, no fun. But at least if you knew
it was going to be 10 percent going forward, it would be a
better world, right? And I think that would give every small
business person at least a fighting chance of holding their own
against the larger competition and against the international
markets as well, which you guys are all competing on.
So, anyway, I'll give to you a last comment if you want.
You don't have to just----
Mr. Bush. I just really appreciate this, thank you very
much. These are the types of things that we don't have access
to, typically, as just little business owners with a dream. And
it's really refreshing to have somebody actually sit across
from me and listen and absorb and ask great questions. And I
really appreciate it. So, thank you and thank you to the staff
for having me and us.
Senator Hickenlooper. You bet.
Mr. Mojica. I echo what Trent said. Thank you so much for
this opportunity to hear our voice. For a small business, I
never thought I'd be in a Senate hearing. [Laughter.]
So, for me, it's incredible to be heard.
Mr. Campbell. Yes. Just to thank you, also appreciate
putting a light on this.
Senator Hickenlooper. I appreciate all of your efforts. I,
again, there's parts of me that listen to this and make me want
to leap into it, back into it. Parts of it are, you know, in
the back of my head saying, we got to do something. And thank
God I don't have to deal with the challenges that you guys are
all facing, just because I've been there and I know what it's
like.
And you know, sometimes you realize all the different
attributes that you as individuals have to have. You know, how
did you know when you first started your business, that good
parenting was going to help allow your business to get through
the tough times? Having kids, being able to step up you know,
all of those things, and they always are, but these are
unpredictable, I mean, completely unpredictable times and do
force us into situations that are oftentimes impossible. And
yet we deal with it as small business people.
But let me make the commitment to you that I will go back,
this is all the congressional record. I'm not sure how much
good that does, but it does lay it down and the public can get
access to it and hear the stories, because I think only through
those stories can we convince Congress and the administration
to wake up and recognize that we're sustaining losses here.
They're needless and they're going to be long lasting, and they
affect every aspect of our country.
So, thank you all. I have to do my closing or who knows
what legal problems I'll be in. [Laughter.]
Thank you to our panel of witnesses for your experience,
your suggestions and certainly the most precious thing for any
small business person, your time, to come here. Again, I want
to thank chair Ernst, Ranking Member Markey, the truly
dedicated committee staff for making this hearing possible.
It's obviously they have to schlep out and put all this
together on a one-off basis.
I'll reemphasize that this is not the end of the
discussion. This is a beginning to our effort to raise the
alarm about how these tariffs are hurting our country. I think
our sleeves are rolled up; your sleeves are all rolled up. We
will dedicate ourselves to creating real practical solutions to
some of these issues you're facing, and do a better job of
working with the Administration if they'll let us, to create a
tariff system that's maybe a little more nuanced, but actually
protects one of our most valuable assets, our small businesses.
If other people have questions or if you guys have other
things you want to put in the record, we'll keep the record
open for a couple weeks. I don't know what that exact date is
but it's in there. I should know it off the top of my head. You
go over the end of the month or always mix the math hard. Thank
you all, really appreciate.
We'll gavel off.
[Whereupon, at 2:22 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[all]