Tariff Thoughts

I am sure many of you are aware of the tariff situation in the US, and I’m sure many of you have heard from publishers about how they are impacted. I thought it might be useful to hear about this from the perspective of a retailer.

Frankly, if the tariffs on China stay where they are (54%) or increase further, Tanuki Games and the board game industry as a whole are in serious danger.

A 54% tariff boils down to a 50% increase in the MSRP of a product. In other words, over 90% of what we sell will go up by about 50%. Obviously that isn’t sustainable.

And that is just for the product that continues to come through our store shelves. Many publishers have already decided, with US tariffs at their current rate, it is not worth bringing new products or reprints to the US. So as the stock that is already in the US dries up, it will become harder and harder to restock games, or get new products.

Even if we could continue to stock products, the inevitable increase in price will certainly be off putting to customers and sales will start to dry up. So we’d be buying products that will be hard to sell.

There are many games we have taken preorders for, that will likely get a price increase before they come to market. We will take huge losses on those games. Because of this, we will not be able to take preorders for games until just before their release when their price is certain.

Jamie over at Stonemaier summarises his thoughts in his Darkest Timeline post. In the post he mentions that retailers will likely suffer the most since many publishers will prioritize crowdfunding and direct sales since the increased margin allows more room for reasonable pricing.

Even if the tariffs are rolled back today, much of the damage is already done. Because of the completely unpredictable and erratic nature of the implementation of these tariffs, many publishers will have to assume a worst case scenario. This will mean they will either preemptively apply a higher price to their product, or skip the US entirely on future releases.

I don't like delivering bad news but this is a very real problem and I think it's important that everyone understands why it's happening should you have the opportunity and inclination to voice your opinion about it.

However, the particularly disheartening thing about this situation is that it feels like it's entirely out of our control. The board game industry is so tightly tied to China that it isn’t really possible to produce many of these products anywhere else. China and the US, more than any other two countries right now, really have it out for each other so it's hard to imagine this problem being resolved anytime soon. And, the board game industry as a whole is so small that it doesn’t carry enough weight to lobby or bring awareness to those that can possibly help with the situation.

Tanuki Games will keep trucking along and doing its best, but apologies in advance as it becomes harder and harder to maintain the standard you have come to expect from us.

Chris

Tanuki Games