Alex Shuford, the CEO of Rock House Farm—the North Carolina–based family of furniture brands that includes Century, Hickory Chair and Highland House—returns to The Business of Home Podcast to discuss the hot-button topics plaguing the industry today. The biggest is no surprise: tariffs. “We don’t have stability on the playing field,” Shuford tells host Dennis Scully. “I was chatting with some of our executives here, because we’re in budget season. How do you budget for 2026? … We’re in product development decision time for the early part of 2026—where are you going to make your product? Which country is at 50 [percent tariffs]? Which country is at 20? Will all of that change? Will it go to zero? Will it get superseded by an across-the-board imported furniture tariff? We’re in a funny spot.”
While most of the Rock House Farm portfolio’s production happens domestically (collectively, it runs nine factories in the U.S.), Shuford still thinks the tariff tumult is going to negatively impact his business. “My Century case goods factory will probably end up with a lot more interest in its abilities than it had half a year ago,” he says. “But on the flip side, I’ve got to sell into a marketplace that requires healthy retailers as well as designers. You take the retailer out of the ecosystem, and we all have a problem. Not [on] day one. … High-end, A-list designers will be fine [on] day one, day two, [even] day 300—but you roll the clock forward a year or two, and the loss of that sampling out in the marketplace will be a real problem for us.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Shuford discusses AI, housing, the North Carolina and Las Vegas furniture markets, and the evolving role of Wayfair’s high-end brand, Perigold.
Crucial insight: Shuford urges designers attending the upcoming High Point Market to talk with suppliers about what’s happening, but to not get too bogged down by prices. “If you get overly focused on that variability, you’re going to spend your time not capturing the things that could be beneficial to you in the future,” he says. “And most designers are not buying at the show anyway, right? The prevailing winds blowing at the show don’t really matter to you for a project that you’re going to install in March or May of 2026. By then, I would expect that we will have a form of stability. There’s a lot of turmoil on the pricing side of the business, but the product has still got to be judged on its merits, and you’ve got to decide whether to put that in your iPhone and save that for a future project. That really [remains] the chore.”
Key quote: “We’re happy to compete in the ecosystem that exists today. We don’t love it when an invasive species comes in and starts to change the rules of the game, but given enough time, the ecosystem kind of grapples with that and it rebalances. But what we’ve got now is sudden and severe climate change within this ecosystem. The furniture-specific tariff, if they were to go forward with it, is probably going to be some order of magnitude over what the country-wide tariffs are—and they’re at 20 percent, so does the administration pursue a 40 or 50 percent tariff? And how damaging would that be? I would tell you it would be pretty significant. I can’t even predict what that looks like on the other side.”
This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Crypton. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
The Thursday Show
Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including fall trends from Pinterest, stolen images on Wayfair, and a look at whether home is the new fashion. Later, Matouk CEO George Matouk Jr. joins the show to talk about the impact tariffs are having on his U.S. factory.
This episode is sponsored by Serena & Lily and Hartmann&Forbes. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
