On a company earnings call Thursday, RH (RH) CEO Gary Friedman shared a frank account of how the furniture retailer navigated a “chaotic and unpredictable” quarter due to tariffs, market volatility, and a weak housing market.
“Everywhere got rocked from the reciprocal tariff announcements,” Friedman said. “When the market went down, our business went down. You had to pull forward, give back. It’s like a noisy, noisy time right now to run your business.”
Friedman emphasized that President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, which took tariffs on China to 54% and then to over 100%, rattled the supply chain, as did the subsequent pause on most tariffs.
“What happened when the reciprocal tariffs hit, we stopped shipments,” the CEO said. “People stopped producing. … I mean, it created disruption for several weeks in the supply chain, and when you try to ramp back up quickly in a chaotic time like that, things are just — things are late. Things get backed up.”
RH expects the tariff disruption will negatively impact Q2 revenues by 6 points but that revenue will recover in the second half of the year. The company continues to shift sourcing out of China and said it projects 52% of its upholstered furniture will be made in the US and 21% will be produced in Italy by the end of the year.
Despite the noisy environment, RH reported an unexpected profit in Q1, sending shares 19% higher in premarket trading on Friday.
Friedman added that RH’s vendor partners absorbed a “meaningful portion” of the tariffs and that the trade wars may allow the company to take share from smaller competitors.
“I mean there’s a lot of people going bankrupt,” he said. “A lot of the ankle-biter businesses, the little online things, … they can’t raise capital. … A lot of them are blowing up. They’re going away.”
“The businesses that I think don’t make it through the rest of this year, they don’t have the scale to deal with the tariffs,” he continued. “They don’t have the leverage. They don’t have the strategic flexibility. So you want to position yourself for the other side. The other side’s where all the upside is.”