Multiple vendor strategy will help Levi Strauss manage tariff turmoil
The chief finance and growth officer at Levi Strauss & Co, Harmit Singh, has said there are grounds for optimism that the brand can steer its way through the 2025 tariff confusion.
Mr Singh (pictured) spoke at this year’s Deutsche Bank Global Consumer Conference in Paris in early June. He said that if tariffs remain at the baseline level of 10% on imports into the US, Levi Strauss has “a good chance of being able to mitigate the impact”.
He explained that the company had learned a lot from the tariff uncertainty that affected supply chains during the first Trump administration, when the US entered into a heated trade dispute with China.
In 2018, he explained, Levi Strauss was importing 15% of its products from China. It adjusted its set-up in response to the tariffs and the share that China now has of its garment production is approximately 1%.
Levi Strauss has manufacturing partners in 28 countries at the moment, Harmit Singh explained, and imports jeans and other products into the US from 20 of them. He said sourcing from different vendors in different parts of the world was an important element of its strategy.
“If you look at our core products, say the 501 or the 511 jeans, they are not rocket science,” he said, “and we can source them from multiple vendors. As long as you work with your vendors and upskill them, they can make those products.”
