By Sarah Nassauer | Photographs by Michelle Gustafson for WSJ

KINZERS, Pa. -- Two stainless steel fire pits look nearly identical. The Solo Stove sells for about $250 and is made mostly in China. Its Amish rival costs $500 and just got a big leg up from President Trump.

The new U.S. tariffs will drive up costs for the maker of Solo Stove and could push the already-struggling market leader into bankruptcy. The Texas-based company, which propelled its sales with heavy advertising during the pandemic, is now slashing marketing and revisiting its prices.

Breeo, a small manufacturer in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, has seized the opening: In recent weeks, the company has run a national television commercial touting its "tariff proof fire pits." The ad shows a welder in a stars-and-stripes helmet working to an electric-guitar soundtrack. "Built to last. Made in America," the ad says.

Breeo's factory is a two-story stucco building the size of two basketball courts, surrounded largely by farmland. Inside, the space is packed with welding and metal-shaping machinery. Most of its workers come from the local Amish community. Amos Stoltzfus, the company's co-founder and chief executive officer, previously worked nearby in his father's business, which manufactures stoves and custom metal goods.

Breeo's executives say the company in 2014 was first to the U.S. market with a smokeless fire pit in the shape of a double-walled steel cylinder. But Solo Stove burned past Breeo with a version that was lighter, cheaper and made in China.

When Trump announced new tariffs last week on goods from nearly every corner of the planet, Stoltzfus called David Ellis, his vice president of operations, to discuss contingency plans.

"Don't worry, this is an opportunity," Ellis told his boss. Our competitors are completely dependent on offshore products, he said. "We are not."

A backyard boom

Solo Stove was founded in 2011 by brothers Spencer and Jeff Jan. Their first product was a small, portable backpacking stove that used sticks and leaves as fuel and could boil water in under 10 minutes. Spencer lived in Shanghai, where he found a manufacturer for the stove, and Jeff lived in Dallas, where he worked out of his garage.

Like many other startup brands, the brothers used digital advertising to build buzz for their invention and sold the camping stove on Amazon.

Breeo was formed in 2014. The company introduced a free-standing steel fire pit but had more success selling metal, ring-shaped inserts that made stone fire pits smokeless. Looking for a reliable U.S. manufacturer, co-founder Jonathan Miller turned to Stoltzfus.

In 2016, Solo Stove launched a Kickstarter campaign for its first backyard-sized smokeless fire pit. Within six weeks, Breeo rushed out a competitor product, a smaller smokeless fire pit intended for casual backyard use.

Miller and Stoltzfus, who worked together on the fire pit, say they were drawn to the idea of American-made products for different reasons. For Stoltzfus, now 42 years old and a father of five, it was in part because of his Amish heritage's emphasis on self-sufficiency. For Miller, who grew up in Canada and isn't Amish, it was because domestic manufacturing gives a company more autonomy to control cost and design and production speed.

From that point forward, Solo Stove and Breeo emerged as the two brands to compare. Solo Stove outran its rival, helped by a flood of marketing and lower prices. "We were able to carve out the niche as the somewhat more expensive, somewhat heavier duty, American-made version," Miller said.

Sales at both companies boomed early in the pandemic, when shoppers spent big on backyard upgrades. Breeo considered raising money from outside investors to spend more on advertising and pump sales, but chose to stay independent and grow more slowly.

Solo Brands went public in 2021, shortly after acquiring men's apparel brand Chubbies, Oru foldable kayaks and Isle paddleboards. The company's total annual sales peaked in 2022 at $518 million, with the bulk of the sales coming from its imported fire pits.

Then the pandemic demand dried up.

Solo Stove, sold at Walmart and Target, remains the top seller of smokeless fire pits. But cheaper copycat products have eroded its market share. Last year, sales of the Solo Stove fell 15% to just under $300 million.

The company has had three CEOs in the past 18 months, and its stock now hovers around 15 cents a share. In a regulatory filing in March, the heavily-indebted company said it might need to file for bankruptcy protection.

Solo Brands is reducing its marketing spending, its largest expense, as well as reworking pricing and product selection, the company's interim CEO, John Larson, said on a March earnings call in which executives didn't take questions from analysts. On the same call, finance chief Laura Coffey said the company expects the impact of tariffs "to be significant through our operations."

At Breeo, the boom wasn't as big, nor the bust. The company has been profitable since it launched its first product, Miller and Stoltzfus said. Breeo's sales last year came in at around $40 million, slightly down from pandemic peaks.

"In 2020, 2021, it felt like, 'Let's go! We're going to be a billion-dollar company,'" said Stoltzfus. "That wasn't reality. We had to right-size, and we did that quickly."

Sales at Breeo dropped, but the company stayed profitable, executives said.

In recent years, Breeo considered moving production outside the U.S. for some of its new and existing products. The company decided that a new wood-burning grill would be best produced in South China, as would accessories such as a spark screen that would become price-prohibitive if Breeo invested in new machinery to produce them in Pennsylvania.

Around 10% of Breeo's revenue comes from products that are now produced in China.

China shock

Stoltzfus first felt the impact of offshoring more than two decades ago, while working in his family's metal-fabrication business. It made displays for companies that sold their goods in Home Depot and other big-box stores. "One day, my dad gets a call from the guys we were working for and they say, 'Hey, China is now offering a 30% discount,'" Stoltzfus recalled.

The family business pivoted away from its display-making business, and now primarily makes coal- and wood-burning stoves.

Now, Stoltzfus sees opportunity in the sweeping tariffs aimed at bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

Breeo executives say they can manage tariff-related cost increases without having to raise prices this year. Like many manufacturers, Breeo is negotiating with offshore suppliers to share the burden of tariffs and re-engineer some products to offset costs, said Ellis, the operations executive. Last week, Breeo executives also started to discuss whether they should produce some of those items in the U.S. instead.

Breeo is fielding calls from more retailers who want its products, in part because its pricing is more likely to stay steady, Stoltzfus said.

"I think you're going to see the price gap close between American-made products and imported products," Stoltzfus said. "It's definitely going to open up some doors for market share."

Write to Sarah Nassauer at Sarah.Nassauer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 12, 2025 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)

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