That nasty word… TARIFFS

I had hoped I wouldn’t have to write this, but hope and reality sometimes clash… harshly. As you’re well aware in the United States, the government has been implementing tariffs for products coming from China. The amount has varied pretty much on a weekly basis. It started out pretty high at 145%, and as of this writing has been reduced to 30% for a short timeframe while discussions occur.

Unfortunately, many of our products do come from China. The biggest are –

• Anything 3D printed (Cases, covers, spacers, etc)
• All our PCB items (Floppy Remapper, Character Generator, Multi-Rom, etc)
• Some machine parts (Reset button, FFC cables)

WE HOPED NOT TO HAVE TO ORDER

We were hoping on one part that things would sell slow enough / the issues between the US and China would clear up and we would not have to do any re-orders during a small window. I realize that’s counter-intuitive to having a business, where the goal is to sell as much as you can as fast as you can and restock and keep selling. 🙂  For things we knew would probably run out, we put orders in as soon as possible. 

WHY NOT JUST BUY IN THE US

I’ve looked at it. Incredibly few items that we source could be bought in the US for a reasonable price. We’ve looked at dozens of 3D printing places and even with the tariff at its height China was still cheaper than the US (I could buy 10 times the amount in China for the same price in the US). We looked at PCBs, and it didn’t make sense. We actually went to Germany for the next series of Floppy Remappers. It was cheaper than China (Not by much, but reasonably) and still much more expensive than the US. We’re trying everything we can, but it’s just not working out.

In the end, we got caught up anyway. All the orders have been taking months to fulfill, and just because I ordered (And paid) for it before the tariffs went into effect, there isn’t a “Grandfather clause” that lets me escape it. 

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN SHORT TERM

In the short term, for anything we’ve bought under the tariff we’ll have to adjust the price. Since we can’t control when we receive some of the items, some will have increased quite a bit. For the ones that came when it’s lower, it might not be so bad. In the hopes that this is still just a temporary thing, we will be trying to keep the prices low by reducing our margin. We probably won’t be having any specials or sales during the time. 

We understand that this might be a huge bummer and some items might not make sense to buy anymore, and we get that. It’s something we’ll have to deal with. 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN LONG TERM

Long term, when (I want to be optimistic that it’s not IF) the tariffs are gone and we can buy things at the “normal” price, we can bring the prices back down on the subsequent restocks. On the flip side, if this continues for quite a while, I’m not sure what we’ll be able to do. I guess that’ll be another post in a few months.

I encourage you to keep checking back, feel free to reach out, and hang in there with us!

Tuc