Ryan Faurie is a business owner and mother living in Greendale, Wisconsin, one of the many sprawling suburbs surrounding Milwaukee. Her business HandmadeMKE specializes in items like jeweled headbands or hair clips, dog collars and guitar straps.
Her husband Will Faurie is an electrical test engineer who works as a subcontractor for the U.S. Navy. Together, they’re raising their 12-year-old daughter and looking toward the future.
Ryan shares how the economy is impacting her right now and how she's preparing for the future, as part of WUWM's coverage of how the economy is impacting Wisconsinites with different financial needs and concerns.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are some of your concerns right now when it comes to your work and your husband’s work?
For me personally, because of the way that my business is set up, the tariffs affect me directly. I buy a lot of my rhinestone trims and fabric and other raw materials, I'll say, overseas simply because they are not made in the US. It's literally China and then maybe one other country, that produce the things that I need to buy. So, I really have no other opportunity or choice but to buy them from overseas.
With the tariffs going into effect, obviously I have the choice of do I buy now and charge people more because the price is going to go up because the price goes up for me, or do I just hold off and wait and kind of cross my fingers.
So I have been holding off, crossing my fingers that, you know, things go back down to the baseline 10% tariff, maybe a little bit more, but I probably have about a month left before I get into a really tricky spot where I kind of have to decide, do I take some of my products off the line? Do I completely change them? Do I shut down one of my businesses cause I have two Etsy stores?
For Will, he's been with his company for I wanna say like 11 or 12 years. He has a great position, I think he's going to be OK. I mean, I don't think defense spending is gonna go down at all, right? And I think we've gotten even a little bit more in this latest bill. So I think he's fine.
"I probably have about a month left before I get into a really tricky spot where I kind of have to decide, do I take some of my products off the line? Do I completely change them? Do I shut down one of my businesses cause I have two Etsy stores."
And I do feel like we are in a better position than a lot of people just because of when we bought our house, his job stability, yeah, how we kind of structured our savings and our budget and everything. But I mean, I'm concerned about grocery prices going up when we have to go back to school shopping, like everything is going to be affected and that's going to, you know, determine how much we can put away for retirement and family vacations.
Your daughter goes to public school. When you see the kinds of budget cuts that are coming for schools, are you concerned or do you think you guys are in a relatively safe bubble in Greendale?
I think we are in a safe bubble, especially compared to like MPS, but I don't see how we're not going to be affected. [My daughter] doesn't have like an IEP, so she's not going to be directly affected, but I know a lot of her friends do and I don't see a positive outcome for cutting those programs.
As you are looking at the year ahead, what are your expectations, what are your fears? When we next speak, where do you think you're going to be?
Hopefully, I think, we are going to be getting solar panels put on our house. We are trying to rush that through before the credit expires at the end of the year. So hopefully that's all taken care of. Hopefully, the tariffs go back down and business is running smoothly again. Typically, the fall through the winter season is like my busy time. So crossing our fingers for that.
And I mean, hopefully [we will be] able to afford going down to Tennessee. My sister's going to be having her baby around that time and I hope that we can afford to travel, get an Airbnb. But I don't know. We shall see.
