Kingdom K-Pop and More: Clemmons business struggles stem from U.S. tariffs on South Korean goods
CLEMMONS, N.C. —
Kingdom Kpop and More in Clemmons is seeing more empty shelves than usual, but it’s not for the reason most business owners would hope.
Deidre Williams, her daughter Kaitlyn Williams, and close friend Morgan Dial own the small business, which has been open for two years exactly as of Monday, Jul7 27.
“Our mantra is feeding you through your eyes, ears and mouth,” Deidre Williams said.
The eyes and ears portion include Korean books and Korean pop music. Normally, Korean products imported into the United States would include additional tariffs, but books and music are considered “informational materials,” and are therefore exempt from tariffs.
But each shipment Kingdom Kpop and More receives needs to be disputed in order to not pay those tariffs.
“We dispute those fees that we get, and we are winning those cases,” Kaitlyn Williams said. “But the problem is it takes a year for – because of so many people putting in these disputes – and so our supplier doesn’t want to wait a year.”
Thus, their supplier has cut off shipping products to their store. In addition, the supplier will not ship products that the owners had already paid for.
“We fully purchase the product, and the product has not arrived,” Deidre Williams said. “It’s been going on over a month and a half now.”
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That leaves them out $10,000, but that’s not where the issues end. The suppliers want an additional $7,000 for a security deposit in order for them to ship the packages Williams, her daughter and close friend already paid for.
Wake Forest professor Robert Whaples says these tariffs can put certain small businesses in a rough spot.
“There’s just a lot of volatility, a lot of changes,” Professor Whaples said. “And all these things that make somebody who has to deal with this, importing goods from Korea for example, in kind of a difficult spot.”
But even with support from the local K-pop community, the business owners just want things to get back to normal.
“I’ve poured my heart, my sweat, my tears in building this from the ground up with my daughters,” Deidre Williams said. “I don’t want to let it go. We will fight until the end.”
Click here to donate to Kingdom Kpop and More’s GoFundMe.
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