{"id":148887,"date":"2025-09-11T12:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148887\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T12:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:22:10","slug":"why-many-businesses-havent-hiked-prices-in-response-to-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/148887\/","title":{"rendered":"Why many businesses haven’t hiked prices in response to tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

We haven\u2019t seen many businesses jack up prices<\/a> in response to the president\u2019s tariffs so far this year<\/a>. One of the most important reasons why is that business owners are worried about how their customers would react, because raising prices can make a business less competitive. They might lose market share.<\/p>\n

But there are also all kinds of other reasons business owners don\u2019t raise prices<\/a>, even when they want to. Right now, many business owners face a number of obstacles that can make it harder for them to hike prices.<\/p>\n

Wolf Tooth Components<\/a> is a manufacturer in Minnesota that makes bike parts. It manufactures about 1,700 unique parts, ranging from clamps, levers, and spacers to gears, pedals, and seatposts. Almost all of them are made out of aluminum.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have some molded parts, we have some rubber parts, but aluminum is the primary because it\u2019s both lightweight and strong,\u201d said co-owner Brendan Moore.<\/p>\n

And these days, aluminum is also more expensive because of the president\u2019s 50% import tax on the metal<\/a>. But Wolf Tooth Components hasn\u2019t raised any of its prices so far this year. Moore said that\u2019s partly because he doesn\u2019t want to upset his customers \u2014\u00a0but it\u2019s also because raising prices is a ton of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting all of the different dealers, which in the U.S. we probably sell through 3,000 or 5,000 dealers, and getting everybody to change their pricing is a huge task,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason is that the company sells so many kinds of parts, Moore said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery individual product that you change a price on, you need to first of all figure out what that price is going to be, and make sure it\u2019s competitive,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to send that to all your partners, so they get it out to all the channels, make sure the channels are updated, and then follow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore said he has to follow up because some of the retailers that sell his products tend to drag their feet with price hikes. After all, it doesn\u2019t hurt to be the last dealer selling stuff at the old, lower price.<\/p>\n

So, Moore\u2019s company ends up spending months prodding them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we hear back, \u2018But these guys haven\u2019t changed their price,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re like \u2018Yeah, yeah, we\u2019re talking to them too, it\u2019s coming.\u2019 And so it\u2019s just a whack-a-mole situation where you\u2019re just contacting each customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For other companies, raising prices can require a lot of manual labor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about all those little sticky price tickets on something,\u201d said Rob Donohue, CEO of David Donahue<\/a>, a men’s apparel brand. \u201cThink about having to get those off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donohue also decided to avoid price hikes this year, even though he\u2019s paying higher tariffs on the clothing he imports from Vietnam. He said he didn\u2019t want to have to pay warehouse employees to sit there with X-Acto knives peeling off price stickers. He also didn\u2019t know what price he\u2019d put on the new stickers, since the president\u2019s tariffs have been all over the place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it going to be, in our case, from Vietnam, 20%?\u201d Donohue said. \u201cOr was it going to be 46%, where they started<\/a>? We didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donohue said he plans to raise prices next year on his spring items. He said he hopes tariff policy will be more stable by then<\/a>. And waiting for the new season will be a lot more straightforward, for both his company and the stores it sells to.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the retailer, they can say, \u2018OK great, you know what, everything we received through fall of \u201825 is at the old price. Spring of \u201826, and going forward, is at the new price,\u2019\u201d Donohue said.<\/p>\n

Relationships between businesses can be another obstacle to hiking prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of it like dating, right? When you\u2019re dating someone, and you have some bad news to share with them, you want to hold off until that relationship develops a little further,\u201d said Sophie Blake. She runs a jewelry company<\/a> that sells rings, necklaces, earrings, and other items that are made in India.<\/p>\n

A couple of months ago, Blake struck a deal to sell jewelry through a big online wholesaler. But just days later, President Trump hiked his tariffs on India to 50%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blake said she really doesn\u2019t want to go back to the wholesaler and try to re-negotiate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis relationship that I was building with this partner, this has been a relationship that\u2019s been in the works for two years,\u201d she said. \u201cSo to unwind all those two years of work would be really tough for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Blake\u2019s prices \u2014 through the wholesaler \u2014 will stay the same. She said her profits are taking a hit, but her strategy at the moment is to just make sure the launch goes well.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me build this relationship, solidify it, and then we can go back to the negotiating table with our partner and discuss pricing again,\u201d Blake said.<\/p>\n

Blake added that if she can prove to the wholesaler that her products sell, she\u2019ll have more leverage when she eventually has to raise her prices.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We haven\u2019t seen many businesses jack up prices in response to the president\u2019s tariffs so far this year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,92159,3228,101,58349,56948,759],"class_list":{"0":"post-148887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-business-owners","10":"tag-consumers","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-price-hikes","13":"tag-price-increases","14":"tag-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}