Trade Wars & Manufacturing Renaissance: Haddy's Florida Microfactory

Forbes

08-04-2025

Tariffs and trade wars amplify the value of in-country manufacturing. Unfortunately, building massive scale factories here in the US to replace overseas production would be a fool's errand. That's rebuilding the past—but we can bring production home, profitably.
The solution is proximate manufacturing: highly automated, robot-enabled additive manufacturing distributed closer to demand. Even without higher tariffs, this approach is rapidly becoming competitive for an ever-wider set of products and customer needs.
Kaihan Krippendorff and I launched this revolution's playbook last year in our bestselling book Proximity.
Additive manufacturing requires raw materials in usable formats, production equipment (e.g.—3D printers) and digital design files. Send digital design files anywhere tariff-free and print products for local demand. Produce what you need, where you need it.
Of course 3D printing doesn't work for every product—but it's getting better FAST. While raw materials will remain subject to trade tensions, proximate manufacturing avoids tariffs, decreases waste--you make only what your customers demand, where and when they demand it--and enables customization impractical or even impossible via traditional means. Over the next decade it will transform global supply chains.
Imagine a super-capable 3D printer at home. Download product design files, push 'print' and hours later you have your customized, made-to-order whatever. An Apple AppStore for physical products.
Though not yet viable for such futuristic home use, 3D printing has evolved for decades. Through hype cycles and skepticism, visionary entrepreneurs have begun transforming industries through value-added applications.
One such entrepreneur is John 'Jay' Rogers, founder and CEO of furniture manufacturer Haddy. I visited Haddy's St. Petersburg, Florida microfactory to interview Rogers in his natural habitat.
Haddy's first microfactory sits in a formerly empty 1930s building in downtown St. Petersburg, a few blocks from the city's restaurant row. Using AI-driven design, industrial robots, automation and additive manufacturing, the facility rapidly designs and produces highly customized furniture. Chairs, tables, sofas in a matter of hours.
Haddy's products were competitive even before tariffs--because microfactories like Haddy's can do things traditional producers simply cannot. Sometimes even next door.
When Hurricane Ian inundated Florida in 2022, Tom and Sonya Maloney, owners of St. Petersburg's beloved coffee house, Paradeco, faced a daunting rebuild. The storm destroyed all of their wooden furniture and coffee bar. Traditional suppliers couldn't respond quickly, compounding daily financial losses. The proprietors needed a fast, storm resistant and beautiful solution.
Tom Maloney contacted Haddy's microfactory, one mile away. Paradeco reopened within two weeks, fully furnished with customized, flood-resistant furniture. Haddy even produced a stunning 3D-printed coffee bar, custom-designed by UK-based designer Sofia Hagen. They downloaded the design file and the robots produced the bar the next day, ready to install.
Paradeco's rapid recovery portends a fundamental shift towards proximate, responsive manufacturing.
Rogers is no newcomer to disruptive innovation. As founder of Local Motors, he spent years building decentralized, digitally-driven manufacturing. Though that vision was ahead of its time, Haddy's growth—with marquee customers like Room & Board and leading architecture and design firms—proves proximate manufacturing has arrived.
"The furniture industry is slow, unresponsive and unsustainable," Rogers emphasized. 'Customer demands change rapidly. Manufacturers thousands of miles away just can't respond quickly."
Haddy's solution? A nationwide network of hyper-localized microfactories, strategically positioned within urban centers. Haddy plans seven U.S. microfactories, eventually expanding globally. Each will function independently yet leverage shared digital resources and innovation.
'With digital product designs and flexible production near customers, we offer unprecedented agility,' Rogers explains. Whether fulfilling a single-unit custom order or hundreds of identical units, 'we deliver at speeds no incumbent can match.'
Traditionally, you could have something cheap, but it will be like millions of other copies, or you could have it custom, but it will be expensive and you'll have to wait. Proximate, digitalized manufacturing enables us to break Industrial Age trade-offs between customization and cost.
Rogers emphasizes, "We used to choose between mass production and customization. Now we can have both."
Small-scale, local fabrication empowers individuals and businesses to shape products without enormous upfront costs. "Customers walk into our experience center and by the time we finish talking, our R&D robots are printing their prototype," Rogers explains. That's what enabled Haddy to produce Paradeco's coffee bar in one day, designed for aesthetics and resilience.
With almost as many robots (8) as people (12), Haddy manifests an impressively humane culture. "Our teammates name the robots, which print their names ceremonially," Rogers notes, "creating a meaningful interaction between people and automation." During my visit, I noticed the care employees showed toward their robot collaborators.
Haddy amplifies individual talent. With supportive culture, robotics and AI, innovators rapidly convert ideas into market-ready products. Owen, a new Haddy employee, left an engineering role in semiconductor manufacturing, explaining to me, 'At Haddy, I can do everything from idea to product. It's pretty cool.'
Haddy's approach echoes my recent interview with Rick Smith, founder of public safety technology firm AXON. Smith argues that the term "individual contributor" should be a badge of honor.
Rogers asserts, 'Automation should enable humans to do more and be more.'
Proximity manufacturing isn't just about shorter supply chains—it signifies deeper community engagement with manufacturing. As Rogers admonishes, "We build factories tailored for cities.' Local businesses thrive around the microfactory, as visitors, customers and employees fill restaurants, hotels and bars.
Sustainability is integral to Haddy. Traditional furniture manufacturing often relies on environmentally harmful materials and processes. Nearly all furniture eventually ends up in landfills. Haddy's model prioritizes recyclable materials and encourages customers to return furniture for recycling credit—a process Rogers calls the "Lineage Model."
'Old products should become new products, not landfills.'
Haddy's approach is gaining momentum. 'In five years, the flywheel will be spun up,' he says, describing the virtuous cycle driving Haddy's growth. 'The more we print, the more we learn. The more we learn, the more we delight customers, so the more we print.' It's a virtuous cycle startups dream of.
As tariffs, geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions accelerate the proximity trend, manufacturers will over time adopt a hybrid model: massive factories far from end-users, supplemented by agile production closer to customers.
Haddy represents the vanguard. Rogers reflects, "Change is always resisted initially, but the benefits of customization, resilience, sustainability and local economic vitality are too compelling to ignore."
Whether or not you eventually have a 3D printer at home, you might soon have companies like Haddy nearby, ready to make visions reality.