Tariffs

Consuming changed the day the tariffs were announced. Absorbing the costs of tariffs will have a brutal impact on the design industry. No business can take it on the chin and keep its customers happy without raising prices. Many of the items have already been purchased with six month lead times before the word tariff was part of our daily conversation will struggle to hike the price. Gotham is beginning to see the tariff costs roll in.

The reality is that the craftsmanship and design of other countries are superior to those in the US. Even if the US began building new factories to replace the design-to-detail we find overseas, it would be done with technology, not human beings.

These tariffs are a big wake-up call for the everyday consumer. Other countries have benefits different from those of the US, which enables them to make products for a lot less than we do here. The bottom line is that the cost of goods will go up.

Is there a silver lining here? We will start to look at creating small batch products in the US at technology-driven manufacturing plants that can make a small group of items and turn them around quickly. This will be better for the environment, too. Yet more companies, like a Prada, makes countless items to ship around the globe every month, and for them to shift gears into small batch, quick turn around, perhaps using technology for people to choose items with them being made based on their personal specs (very future thinking here), and then delivered to their door, will destroy the current model. It is one thing to make that decision as a small brand that is privately owned, it is another decision for a publicly traded company.

It will take years for new models to rise to the top. In the meantime, Gotham is thinking about pricing, our customers, our vendors, and what the future will look like with tariffs added to our glass bottles with Alibaba. Do we raise the price or figure out how to make them in the US, where the cost might be just as high as the Chinese glass products with the tariff? We will find out soon enough.