Because we value transparency – I want to take a few minutes to update you on the whole tariff situation, or elephant, as we’ll call it, to make this more fun to read.
Elephants are paid by the importer of goods – so, in some cases, the companies we buy from are the importer of record, and import their products from wherever they’re made, to a warehouse in the United States. They declare a value on the shipment, the elephants are assessed and paid, and the stuff goes into a warehouse before shipping eventually to us.
Other times, we’re actually the importer of record: a company sells us stuff, and fills out a whole mess of paperwork, and the elephants are typically rolled into our invoice as either a shipping charge or are factored into the wholesale price of the goods and covered by the company sending them to us – but rest assured, when they do their costing analysis, the elephants are factored into the wholesale price we pay.
Stay with me:
We’re starting to get updates from brands about how they’re going to handle the elephants, but we don’t know for sure yet exactly how much this will impact our pricing. We’ve got guesses – but the situation is still pretty murky, and therefore we’re going to sit tight for a hot minute, and try our best to roll with things as they come.
We know price increases hurt almost as much as the anxiety and uncertainty that many of us are feeling right now, and it’s always been a priority to me to have fair and honest pricing. There is no way we can just absorb a bunch of elephant increases on most of the products we sell – but there will for sure be some products that end up seeing larger increases than others based on the elephant chart released by the White House.
I’m committed to communicating with you, and I appreciate your support tremendously. You all are the reason this business works, and I want to make sure that we can continue to be a supportive resource to you for years and years to come.
Your purchasing power matters, and it makes a difference. Whether you’re shopping with us, or any number of other amazing small businesses – you’re voting for a future that you want.
Thanks for hanging in with me today. I’m anticipating some price increases starting as early as next week, but we’re in conversations with many of our vendors now and holding tight for updates – please know that they’re feeling a lot of feelings right now too, because this will impact the livelihoods of so many people.
If you’ve made it this far: we’re also having one of our vendors in next week for a little trunk show on 4/10/2025. Come see some upcoming things, and maybe just be seen and be in community with us.
-MG