Unedited letter from our supplier. We provide this as full transparency in our pricing.
April 8, 2025
We have entered very uncertain times on the pricing of products due to new tariffs and world events. We have been paying the higher tariffs from the first round of tariff increases for about a month now. We have held off on making any pricing decisions to see if the situation would change, but it has not and, in fact, has gotten worse. On April 18th we will change our prices to reflect the first two large tariff increases. This means a 20% increase in the price of all products from China as well as an additional 25% increase on products hit with the surcharge on Steel and Aluminum products. The products that are being hit with the steel and aluminum tariffs that we know of include our line of Ultra Aluminum Sheet stock for lasering and sublimation, Stand-offs for plaques and signage, and also Trophy hardware such as Ferrules, Couplers and Hexnuts.
On April 2nd a new round of reciprocal tariffs was announced that will affect products imported from nearly all countries of the world. This round of tariffs will mean much more in price increases when they take effect on anything entering the US starting April 10th. We will not be adjusting prices for this new round of tariffs at this time, even though we will begin paying them soon. We plan to watch the situation closely and hope that there will be some agreements and reductions in these announced rates. If these new tariffs remain in effect, we will have to increase our prices again in 6-8 weeks to allow for these cost increases.
Due to these uncertain pricing times, we will no longer be doing new special quotes that lock in pricing for a period of time for our customers. We will also not be able to accept any orders to be placed at current pricing that are requesting future ship dates. All orders placed will have to accept immediate shipment as we are able to process the orders. We are anticipating many of our customers will be placing larger orders to stock up before these pricing increases go into effect. We will attempt to fill all orders as quickly as we are able, but our ability to do so will depend on the size of this surge in orders during what is already a busy time of year for us. We ask for your understanding and patience during these unusual times.
Tropar price increases are more complicated due to the retail pricing and published Airflyte catalog. Many items such as the glass, acrylic and piano finished plaques will be affected since they are imported, but many items like the walnut plaques and plates are made in the US so will have fewer if any changes needed. We have decided not to change the Airflyte retail prices as part of the April 18th price increases. Only the component parts made in China such as Piano plaques will increase at this time. We think it will be better to make one larger price change on the Airflyte line once we are updating pricing for the reciprocal tariffs. Future price changes will be subject to change if the tariff situation changes as well.
We will do our best to continue to communicate with you as things evolve with this current situation. We are also anticipating many of our domestic factories to change pricing during this period as they adjust to this new environment as well. The changes are likely to be too numerous for us to be able to announce them all as they happen. Please continue to use our online tools to monitor current pricing on all of our products. Keep in mind that all prices are subject to change and it is likely pricing could change rapidly and frequently over the next several months. We are hopeful that things will become more stable later this year.
We are beginning to work with our vendors overseas to see what they can offer us in discounts to be able to soften any price increases. Any discounts we recieve will not affect our costs for 4-6 months though when those new shipments would start to arrive. We will take these adjustments into account on our future rounds of price changes.
We are working on an enhancement to our website that will allow you to more easily search for Made in the USA products, watch for announcements on this. We are also planning to make a spreadsheet available to our customers that will show JDS pricing that was effective on different dates of this year on all of our products. This will allow you to be able to look up an item and see how much it has changed since January for example, we think this may be useful for you in pricing to your customers.