Uhhh, hey.

This has been quite a time for small businesses lately. Don't know how much many of you are familiar with the political situation, but tariffs have gone up and down and up and, at this point, most other pintopian project creators have been freaking out and doomspiraling about how this is going to ruin their business. I was in the same boat, but being patient about it.

At this moment it sounds like the tariffs are going to be walked back, but we have no idea how low they will go. For people unfamiliar, right now we are at a 145% tariff on Chinese made goods. What that means for us is that, because our plush and pins are made in China, the manufacturing cost is charged to the importer (me) when it arrives to the US to the % of the tariff. 

In this example, plushies end up costing me 24.50 to manufacture. I only charged $30 during the campaign. Considering advertising costs, sample costs, freight shipping, and backerkit platform fees and credit card charging fees, I would be taking a loss per plush. And unfortunately, it cost me more than $10 per plushie to manufacture in reality. 

As of this moment, the plushes are generally on their way to me from China. Also as of this moment, the tariffs are still in place. They said as recently as this morning that they are walking back the tariffs, but not when it will happen or how low they will get, other than Trump saying they won't go down to 0%. So they could be anywhere from 1-145%.

This level of uncertainty has caused multiple small businesses to already shutter their doors, there's just no way to trust our numbers when an insane king can just implode our economy on his whims, then say he doesn't mean it, then impose it worse, then roll it back. And until it's actually rolled back, we won't know.

I have confirmed the enamel pins have been fixed to my satisfaction, and I have placed the order for the pins to be made (and paid) as of yesterday, but even the manufacturer is suggesting we just wait a little bit to see how much it will cost to ship/what the tariffs will be, since it sounds like they are being walked back.

Because of all this, we are just kind of... twiddling our thumbs as we wait to see what the king will choose. When will it be rolled back? How low will it go? And when the pins are on their way to me, will they go up again? We frankly just can't know.

But the pins are ordered, the plushies are on their way, and we're all just crossing our fingers that this dick measuring contest will end so we don't have to cough up 1.5x the manufacturing cost to the US government for literally no reason. 

Thanks for your continued patience, I'll let you all know what arrives and what it costs, I suppose!

7DA
your pub gob