Bruce Krinsky has spent a decade perfecting a sweet spot for sales in the American living room: $900 sofas for shoppers wanting an upgrade over IKEA without splurging on Crate & Barrel.
That formula turned TOV Furniture, the company he founded with his wife, into a business pulling in more than $100 million a year. Today, the 44-year-old with a high-school education is living in a Mediterranean-style house in Miami Beach with a fountain and swimming pool.
But for Krinsky, achieving the American dream in the Trump era has been an odyssey. He struggled to stay ahead of changing U.S. policy on trade through a decade in which the nation has wrestled with where it wants its everyday things to be made.
When the U.S. allowed China unfettered access to American markets, Krinsky found suppliers there to deliver what American consumers wanted, including couches with curved backs and longer cushions for stretching out.
When the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on China, Krinsky successfully lobbied a Chinese supplier to build a new factory in Vietnam. When Trump threatened punitive levies there too, Krinsky bought a plant in the North Carolina furniture hub the president said he would revitalize via tariffs.
Krinsky was celebrated in High Point, N.C. -- until he closed up shop after just 10 months and cut roughly 45 jobs.
Today, Krinsky's sofa is still made in Asia. Only now it costs $1,500 -- and Krinsky is dealing with a recent unpleasant surprise that could upend the economics of his business. And he holds little hope, he said, that the midterm election results will offer a reprieve. "Furniture tariffs are not going to be at the top of either party's agenda," he said.
"What exactly is an American business supposed to do?" said Krinsky, who said he voted for the president three times because he felt Trump was the most pro-business candidate. "We're trying to do what the government wants."
A White House spokesman said Trump is delivering on his promise to "level the playing field for American workers, expand job opportunities and raise wages for hardworking families." He said the president will continue to use his authority to restore economic prosperity to communities "hollowed out by jobs shipped overseas."
Geopolitical math
Krinsky grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, N.Y., where his education ended after the 11th grade. By his 20s, he was married with two daughters and working in commercial real estate. He quit after five years, in 2009, when the recession made business tough.
That same year, he bought a website that sold and shipped furniture made by other companies. Business was good, he said, but he was frustrated by the lack of stylish, affordable pieces for younger shoppers. He decided to manufacture his own line, designed by his wife, Chaya, then a teacher.
He checked the label on a tufted wingback armchair he sold and tracked down the Chinese manufacturer through a U.S. government database. When he flew to Shanghai for a factory tour, he was picked up at the airport in a car blaring the Backstreet Boys.
"They were a little bit behind the times," Krinsky said.
He discovered that China was a sprawling, hyperefficient manufacturing machine that could build everything he envisioned. At trade shows, English-speaking representatives pitched him on their chairs, couches and beds. By 2018, the Krinskys had seven suppliers across China, churning out their $900 sofas.
Through TOV Furniture -- named after the Hebrew word for "good" -- they sold directly to consumers online, and supplied hotels, restaurants and retailers like Costco.
The formula made them rich, enabling the family, which had added a third daughter, to move from Long Island to a home on a half-acre plot in Miami Beach.
Then came their lesson in geopolitics.
Trump had already imposed a 25% tariff on some Chinese furniture during his first term, a hurdle Krinsky navigated by asking partners to eat part of the cost and by diversifying to Vietnam. But in 2023, as Trump made even higher tariffs on China a pillar of his re-election campaign, Krinsky wanted a backup plan.
He sat down with his most important supplier, a husband-and-wife team in China producing 35% of his inventory. Krinsky said that if Trump won again and tariffs on China skyrocketed, TOV Furniture would be screwed.
"It would also destroy your business," he told them.
He urged the company to open a second plant -- in Vietnam. The supplier, Zhiwei Furniture, eventually agreed, after hearing from other customers that wanted to diversify their supply chains from China. The owners sent their 20-something nephew and his wife to run a new location outside Ho Chi Minh City.
Construction began in August 2024, three months before the U.S. election. "Almost all the people were saying, 'Trump will be the president again,' " said the wife, Lareina Hu, now the sales manager of Zhiwei Furniture's Vietnamese factory.
A three-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, through winding roads teeming with moped riders balancing ladders and live chickens, the industrial zone of Dong Nai rises from the rural landscape.
Here sits Zhiwei Furniture's second plant, in two cavernous buildings. It employs 130 people, including Nguyen Van Hai, who works up to 10 hours a day, six days a week, for about $8,000 a year.
"That salary is really high," said the 32-year-old upholsterer, taking a break from attaching fabric to an ottoman. Nguyen said that in a few years he'll have enough money to buy a house, with enough left over for his two children's education.
When the factory opened in March 2025, Krinsky relaxed. He had successfully diversified from China.
Just weeks later, Trump unveiled a sweeping new trade policy designed to boost American manufacturing. Krinsky wasn't surprised when Trump slapped another 34% in tariffs on Chinese goods. What blindsided him was the proposed tariff on Vietnam: 46%.
Inflation and supply-chain changes had already pushed the retail price of his $900 couch to about $1,250. Another 46% in tariffs would send that close to $2,000, a nonstarter for his business model.
"At $2,000, there's no reason for us to exist," Krinsky said. "There are plenty of companies like Crate & Barrel that already do a great job selling those products."
Worried that orders would dry up, Krinsky went on LinkedIn late one night and asked if anyone knew of an American factory for sale. He got a response in three days.
Furniture capital
At first glance, the rows of furniture boutiques make downtown High Point, N.C., look like a miniature version of New York's Madison Avenue. The catch: It's a ghost town.
The showrooms sit empty for all but a couple of weeks a year during trade shows. It's a facade for a city that still calls itself the Furniture Capital of the World, even though offshoring to Asia reduced the number of North Carolinians working in the industry from 91,000 in 1990 to 27,000 this year.
Beyond downtown, the landscape is a patchwork. The campus of High Point University, a favorite of wealthy families, gives way to industrial pockets, where buzzing factories are interspersed with padlocked, graffitied plants.
This was where Krinsky found his opportunity, a factory with $2.4 million in back orders but just a couple of weeks of payroll before insolvency.
He flew up from Florida the next business day to run the numbers.
The immediate hurdle was the American paycheck. While North Carolina's $7.25 minimum hourly wage adds up to roughly $15,000 a year, the shortage of upholsterers meant starting pay was roughly $45,000 a year, while top upholsterers could surpass $90,000.
Krinsky's target retail price for his couch was now about $1,500.
While the economics for each kind of sofa varied, the rough math was this: In Vietnam, labor and materials were $280 per couch. Add $70 for tariffs, $75 for ocean shipping and $230 for U.S. delivery, and the total cost was $655. That left $845 for overhead, warranties and returns, marketing and profit.
In High Point, just the labor and materials cost $1,000. Avoiding tariffs and ocean freight saved money, but domestic shipping brought the total to $1,230.
That left $270 to play with. But Krinsky thought he could make the factory more efficient, and there was the added bonus of advertising a made-in-USA product. "We initially thought we could make the numbers work," he said.
He bought the factory from its previous owners for zero dollars, agreeing to continue operating and investing in it. He called it Revival American Contract Furniture. It would make pieces for TOV Furniture and third parties.
He soon regretted it.
Krinsky realized he had no leverage over the upholsterers -- the people with the skills and grip strength to stretch fabric over wooden frames -- because they were so scarce. He said when one didn't show up for a month, he couldn't fire him.
"I didn't have people to replace him, so I'm telling him, 'OK, let me know when you can come back,'" he said.
The other surprise was production pace. The High Point upholsterers, Krinsky said, completed two to three sofas a day. At his Asian partners, they completed 10 a day at a fraction of the salary.
He said one of the main problems was that the American workforce was aging. "The Vietnamese and Chinese factories are much more efficient. From my personal opinion, culturally, they're very hungry," Krinsky said. "In the U.S., we're either too comfortable or burnt out."
A former employee said the factory didn't operate efficiently because Krinsky lacked manufacturing experience and wasn't on site enough. Krinsky said that criticism was fair and he made mistakes, but that he hired experienced on-site managers to oversee the plant.
Krinsky said he was losing $100 or more on each couch. He might have broken even if he raised the retail price to $2,000, but that wasn't his niche.
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