Greg Owens wants to sell his company’s stainless-steel flatware to customers in Britain and Australia. Only one thing stands in his way: the strength of the U.S. dollar.
Owens’s company, Liberty Tabletop, the last stainless steel flatware maker in the United States, produces its distinctive offerings in a century-old brick building in Sherrill, N.Y. Each time Owens converts the sales price of competing products in those overseas markets into dollars, he flinches.
“When I’m at a 20 or 30 percent disadvantage versus my competitors’ prices, I have no chance — and that’s pretty much what’s happening,” he said. “If that were somehow to be corrected, it would go a long way to helping us be more competitive.”