2025! What a year!
Oh wait its only been 3 months... well you can't blame us if it has felt like a decade already as we have taken some big hits as a small business
PROBLEM #1
Target rolls back DEI and sparks a boycott. (We have our Jaffy the Giraffe baby rattle in Target stores... its kinda our bread and butter. And considering our customer base is majority woman and people who support LGBTQ these boycotts hit HARD.
What do we do? Push TikTok, try to drive sales to our website and partner with small specialty stores.
PROBLEM #2
TikTok is being sold. Its not being sold. Its going away. Its staying for another 75 days... We LOVE Tiktok. We get great online sales from Tiktok. Thanks to @Pearlmania. So losing another revenue stream is another ball thats hard to juggle...
What do we do? Look into other social media platforms like Skylight, try Pinterest yet again, look for alternative sales channels.
PROBLEM #3
TARIFFs... Prior to this year, there were NO tariffs on baby toys. 0%. Then we started the 10%, no 34%, no 54%, no 104%, wait no 145% all in a matter of weeks.
We just sent our 2026 developments over to Target last week and were patting ourselves on the back that we took into account the 54% tariffs into our pricing.
What do we do? We wait. With the constant changes, volatility and fear, its hard to strategize or make a plan. We luckily don't have a container on the water yet, but replenishment time for holiday is coming and who knows where we will land.
Currently we have enough stock to keep us in business but when reorder time comes, what do we do?
Do we move to Vietnam where the skill set isn't up to par with our current China factory? That takes time to find another factory, sample and get the up to par with our current line, redo the strict testing, and hopefully price match.
As I recently explained to our insurance agent, there are NO factories that make baby toys in the US. In 2018, when we were starting out I did my research. And with a background in handbag manufacturing I knew I would be able to find someone in America... but NO. The United States doesn't have factories, skilled labor or any materials that go into making an $8.99 rattle.
I also looked into Mexico 2 years ago after the Container Wars where a typical 20ft container was around $5k to ship and turned into 18k.... but Mexico had a really long build up time and all the materials were being sent over from China anyway.
So where does that leave us?
PIVOT- to what I am not sure.
PAUSE- so much has changed in the last 3 months, and feels like it changes daily, that we can only hope more changes will happen next week. (hopefully good changes).
We wanted to share this update as when you see Small Business Videos on social media, some of the comments are very mean:
"This is a risk of doing business" - No this is not a normal business event like shipping delays, natural disasters or covid. This is bad leadership.
"Why don't you produce here? US made is the only way to go" - there are no factories in the US or skilled labor or materials. If manufacturing in the US was the goal, there would be a strategy of building the infrastructure. But as a country, why are we focused on manufacturing consumer goods which haven't been a part of our economy for the past 100 years and will need the investment and build up, when we could focus on other areas like finance, science, tech, etc.
Why are you ok with China's child slavery?" - All factories in China that sell to mass retailers have to be certified. There is testing not only on the product but the facility. I have been to Chinese factories in Dongguan many times. I have spent 2 weeks/12 hour days working with our overseas team, eating in the canteen, I saw the dorms, I even was invited to a counterparts home for dinner. To insult another country and it's people like that shows the lack of education around manufacturing, the supply chain and global issues.
Stay tuned for hopefully some good news for all of us.
