The Espresso Machine Maker Who Can't Get Parts Anymore

Bev Nguyen keeps a photograph on her office wall that she looks at when the spreadsheets stop making sense. It's her grandfather in Saigon, 1974, standing in front of his small metalworking shop. The one he'd leave behind the following year with nothing but the skills in his hands.

"He rebuilt from zero," she tells me. "Sometimes I think about what he'd do now, watching me agonize over supplier contracts."

We're sitting in the production floor of Nguyen Precision Manufacturing in Seattle's industrial district, where her company builds high-end espresso machines and coffee roasting equipment for specialty cafes and roasteries. The machines around us are gorgeous. All copper and steel and careful engineering. But Bev's attention keeps drifting to her laptop, where she's been modeling scenarios for the past three months that all feel equally wrong.

The immediate problem sounds simple enough: her primary electronics supplier in Malaysia just told her to expect 40% price increases starting in Q3, citing "climate-related operational challenges."

The real problem is that this is the third supplier in eighteen months to either raise prices dramatically, miss delivery windows, or both.

And Bev is trying to figure out whether to eat the costs, pass them to customers who are already price-sensitive, find new suppliers she doesn't trust yet, or do something more radical that might bankrupt her.

How did you get here? This seems like more than normal supply chain turbulence.

Bev: Started maybe two years ago. Our machining supplier in Vietnam had flooding that shut them down for six weeks. Okay, fine, that's bad luck. Then our copper supplier in Arizona couldn't get consistent water access for their processing facility and had to ration production. Then the Malaysian electronics plant—these are the circuit boards that control temperature and pressure, the brains of the machines—they had rolling power outages last summer because the grid couldn't handle cooling demand.

Each time it happens, I'm doing this calculus: Is this a one-time thing I can absorb? Is this the new normal I need to price in? Should I be looking for alternatives?

She laughs.

And the answer is always... I have absolutely no fucking idea. Because I don't have enough information to know if I'm overreacting or underreacting.

What kind of information would you need?

Bev: Like, okay. My insurance broker keeps sending me these climate risk assessments that are basically: "Malaysia has elevated flood risk and typhoon exposure." Great, super helpful. What does that mean for my supplier's specific facility? Are they on high ground? Do they have backup power? Are they investing in resilience or are they just hoping for the best?

I asked my supplier directly and got this very polite non-answer about "monitoring the situation." Which I think means they don't know either, or they know and don't want to tell me because it's bad.

Turns out 70% of companies can't get adequate climate data from their suppliers¹, so I'm not alone in this. That doesn't help me make a decision though.

The circular economy people keep telling me I should bring manufacturing back to the US, design for disassembly, start a take-back program for old machines. And I'm like... do you know what it costs to machine precision parts in Seattle versus Shenzhen? My margins are already thin. I can't just triple my production costs because it's the right thing to do.

But you're thinking about it anyway.

Bev: Long pause.

Yeah.

Because here's what keeps me up at night: I have customers who are asking about this stuff now. Not the big chains, they don't care. But the independent roasters, the cafes that are my core business. They want to know where the machines are made, what happens to them at end-of-life, whether I'm "climate-conscious" or whatever.

And I want to tell them yes! I want to be the good guy! But I also need to make payroll. I've got eighteen employees. If I make the wrong bet here and the business goes under, that's eighteen families without income.

That's not theoretical. Supply chain disruptions cost companies 8-12% of annual revenue on average². For a business my size, that's the difference between profit and bankruptcy.

So what are your actual options?

Bev: Laughs. Oh, I've got a whole menu of bad choices.

Option one: Stay with current suppliers, absorb the price increases, hope things stabilize. This is the "pray and spray" approach. Cheap in the short term, but I'm basically betting that climate disruptions won't get worse, which... gestures vaguely ...seems like a bad bet?

Option two: Diversify suppliers, which sounds great until you realize it means qualifying new manufacturers, which takes months, costs money, and there's no guarantee the new suppliers aren't equally vulnerable. I could move from Malaysia to Mexico, but then I'm exposed to different climate risks and different political risks.

Option three: Reshore everything I can. Bring the electronics manufacturing to the US, find domestic metal suppliers, pay 2-3x current costs and pass it to customers. Some will pay the premium for "Made in USA" but a lot won't. And I'll lose business to competitors who are still getting cheap parts from Asia.

Option four. And this is the one that feels both most exciting and most terrifying. Go all-in on circular economy. Design the next generation of machines to be fully modular and repairable. Start a take-back program where I refurbish old machines. Build a parts stockpile so I'm not dependent on just-in-time delivery. Partner with a domestic manufacturer on a revenue-share model.

That last one sounds like what the sustainability consultants would tell you to do.

Bev: Right, except it requires a massive upfront investment that I'd be financing with debt, and it only works if enough customers actually value it.

There's this gap between what people say they want and what they'll pay for. Everyone loves the idea of sustainable, repairable equipment until they see the price tag.

Plus—and this is the part that makes me feel crazy—I'd be doing all this while my competitors are still running the old model. If I'm wrong about where the market is going, I've just handed them a huge cost advantage. If I'm right but I'm five years too early, I'm still bankrupt.

Have you talked to other manufacturers about what they're doing?

Bev: Some. There's this weird thing where everyone's dealing with the same problems but nobody wants to admit how bad it is. At trade shows, people are like, "Oh yeah, supply chains are tough right now," and then they change the subject. Nobody wants to show weakness.

I know for a fact that 69% of US manufacturers have started reshoring their supply chains³. But I don't know if that's working for them or if they're just doing it because they feel like they have to. Are they making money? Are their customers actually buying the "Made in USA" pitch? Nobody publishes that data.

My insurance broker told me—off the record—that they're starting to reduce coverage for companies that can't document clear risk-mitigation measures⁴. So there's this pressure from the insurance side too. Like, even if I wanted to just keep doing what I'm doing, at some point my insurance costs are going to force my hand.

What does your gut tell you?

Bev: Laughs. My gut tells me I should have gone to law school like my parents wanted.

No, but seriously. My gut says the circular economy thing is where this is going eventually. Because it's the only model that makes sense when you can't rely on global supply chains anymore. If I can't trust that I'll get parts from Malaysia next year, I need to be able to cannibalize old machines for parts. If I can't get new copper at reasonable prices, I need to be recycling copper from machines I take back.

But my gut also says I might not survive long enough to see that future.

The transition period is brutal. And I don't know if I'm supposed to be leading this transition or if I'm just supposed to be surviving it.

How do you make a decision when you don't have enough information?

Bev: That's the question, isn't it?

I keep waiting for more clarity, but clarity isn't coming. The climate models say things will get worse, but they don't tell me whether my specific suppliers will be okay next year. The market signals are mixed. Some customers care about sustainability, others just want the cheapest option. The insurance industry is pricing in risk but not in a way that gives me useful guidance.

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So I'm probably going to do some hybrid thing. Diversify suppliers a bit, start designing the next generation of machines with modularity in mind, maybe pilot a small take-back program to test customer interest. Hedge my bets.

It's not satisfying. It's not a bold vision. But it's what you do when you're trying to make decisions in the fog.

She closes her laptop and looks back at the photograph of her grandfather.

He made one big bet and it worked out. Left everything behind, came here, built a business.

I'm making a dozen small bets and hoping enough of them work out.

I don't know if that's wisdom or cowardice. Probably some of both.