From knitting needles to pottery clay: Businesses that supply artisans look for local alternatives
N.B. craft shops, artists on the hunt for local, regional suppliers as tariffs take effect
Tariff threats and realities are spurring some New Brunswick businesses that cater to artists to turn their backs on U.S. suppliers to create more local opportunities.
Local goods have always been a part of Elizabeth Miller's Saint John store, Good Fibrations, which is stocked with fibre-arts supplies, hand-knitted toques, canvas bags, pottery and rolls upon rolls of yarn.
But she also relies on imports from the United States, the U.K. and Europe for some products that aren't made in Canada. The tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump had been threatening since February sent her scrambling for local suppliers.
"Knitting needles are made from steel or aluminum," Miller said. "So it's been a scramble to try to find that because people need them."
Miller's knitting needles are made in China but are sold by a U.S. distributor.
"We encounter this frequently, something that we love ... we may have to buy through the U.S.," she said.
Miller said her 7mm knitting needles, for example, retail at roughly $16 to $18 a pair. The 25 per cent tariffs on aluminun and steel will send the price higher.
"People absorb it but only to a point. Everything gets too expensive eventually and people don't want it any longer," she said.
"So as a shopkeeper, I don't want it anymore."
Miller said she's also aiming to create more relationships with craft shops nationwide.
"We do all of our own dying and weaving on site," she said.
"I'd love to find some wholesale customers that would like to buy our weaving and sell it in their lovely craft shop somewhere across the country."
Regionalizing art supplies
While Miller is prioritizing Canadian suppliers, potter Andrew McCullough — who owns Nu Ceramics Studio in Fredericton — is trying to make some supplies more easily available in the region.
Getting material such as clay is already expensive because it's shipped in large batches in heated trucks from Ontario, McCullough said, speaking to CBC Radio's Shift.
He's undertaken an ambitious task — to make use of the clay found in working mines in the Maritimes and make it more readily available for local artists.
McCullough said these "volatile economic times" will make pottery materials more expensive very quickly, and he wants to get ahead of the game.
"I'm hoping that by getting some of this stuff started now, hopefully this moves us towards a bit of a regionalization of our art-supply chain that will benefit creators in years to come."
Some of the clay in these regional mines may be used for things like brick-making, he said, while some is not used at all. One mine his studio has set his sights on is in Lantz, Nova Scotia, and is owned by a brick company.
McCullough's studio plans to start with small batches of clay to sell to local potters and is currently in early talks with mine owners.
"We're not going to be able to produce on the same scale that the big pre-existing pottery suppliers are … what we can do is work with the resources that are most accessible right now."
Meanwhile, Miller says she and surrounding shop owners are buying as much as they can of what they need now.
"Because of course our countervailing tariffs are going to hurt us, we know that … but it's a pain that I haven't heard anybody complain about," she said.
"I haven't heard one person say I wish they wouldn't do that to us," she said.
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With files from Shift