The Small-Business Survival Struggle

Canadian entrepreneurs are in a David-versus-Goliath battle with Trump's tariffs to stay afloat. I'm one of them.

- By Lisa Karandat

IN 2020, I LAUNCHED Good Juju, a small home-and-body-care business, with my partner, Alexa Monahan. We started with shampoo and conditioner bars, then moved into laundry detergent strips, thin PVA sheets that we had manufactured in China. Each pack saved one plastic bottle from the landfill. Customers developed an almost cult-like devotion to our products. And we did it all remotely: Alexa is in Vancouver and I'm in Toronto.

Within our first two years, we expanded into stores like Indigo and London Drugs, and we hired two employees—one full-timer and one part-timer. By the end of 2022, we broke into American retail: we landed deals with Grove Collaborative and Thrive Market, two major U.S. e-commerce platforms significantly larger in scale than Well.ca. Our online business was soon flourishing, and 500 stores were selling our products across North America. Our goal to move enough product to eliminate 50 million plastic bottles by 2030 seemed not only realistic, but inevitable. Then Trump got elected. Again.

Alexa is the pragmatist of the two of us—I deal with issues as they arise. She’d seen danger coming since Trump’s campaign-trail promises to institute tariffs and bring manufacturing back to America. I, on the other hand, was convinced it was one big bluff, with financial implications so extreme and far-reaching that they bordered on absurd. Surely common sense—or actual adults in the room—would prevail. That denial is probably why I found myself in a panic after last February’s announcement: 25 per cent tariffs on most Canadian imports and 10 per cent on Chinese ones? Taking effect within four days? For Good Juju, this was catastrophic.