Hey all!
First, thanks to everyone who has supported the store this past year. The hundreds of messages I've received about how happy everyone has been with their products has been incredible. When the store launched late last year, I never expected to have this much interest and getting to share creations with everyone has been a blast.
After an incredible March and April, which took a long time to catch up on, I saw sales sharply decline with the announcement that tariffs would be coming to goods imported into the USA. As a Canadian brand, the majority of sales on FrostyVoid come from the US, which makes a lot of sense when you consider the country has roughly 10x the population of Canada. The simplicity of trade between the two countries has been one of our greatest strengths and has benefited both.
For me, it was as easy as carefully packaging your products and slapping a shipping label onto the carton. Drop the package off into the mail system and it makes it over there without a problem, duties and tariffs exempt due to the "de minimis" rule. This rule meant that any products sent to the USA from any countries under $800 USD could enter freely. Initially, the removal only applied to China, and with all my products made in Canada, we were still okay to keeping shipping over the border. Now though, in a few days, that exemption is going away. Luckily, under the CUSMA agreement, products I am making should fall under duty-free Made in Canada goods.
But, even with that, Canada Post has had many packages refused at the border when they are up the all the correct paperwork and even eBay has stopped working with them (at least for now) for label creation due to their Delivery Duty Paid service not being easily integrated.
Stallion Express, which is my preferred way of getting packages into the USA because they carry them over the border and then USPS handles the final mile delivery, has as of this morning figured out more details on how they're going to be clearing packages; This means increased fees for each package, and a whole lot of paperwork for me to do to remain compliant. I don't mind the increased paperwork, but I need to make sure I do it right so that there are no problems. Stallion has in the past charged shippers $1000 fees whenever they send a package that isn't compliant, and I cannot afford to make that mistake. I haven't, yet, made that mistake, I've shipped hundreds of packages successfully with no issue because I've followed their guidelines perfectly, but, these ones are a bit more complicated and I want to give it some time to make sure that they even know what they are doing with clearing shipments.
Overall, the communication aspect of duties and tariffs has been poor.
All of this to say, for now, I'm temporarily suspending shipping to the USA. The good news, however, is:
- All current orders going to the USA have been shipped and cleared the border.
- Canadian orders are unaffected and continue as normal.
- Printers are still running, I'm building up stock as much as possible.
Since May, I've been very hesitant on doing large batches of promotion for the store because of the uncertainty week-by-week on what is happening with tariffs which is why I have been absent on social media for the most part. I can't foot the bill if the theoretical tomorrow my packages are going to be dinged a 50% up-charge. Tariffs shouldn't change daily based on how someone feels. We are playing with real lives here and small businesses. People in power need to understand that on a micro level, these changes cause a lot of harm and on a macro level, you need lot of time for things to normalize. Shaking the system up just for the sake of shaking it does not immediately increase the production of goods in your own country, it just causes chaos.
This is going to hurt the business, FrostyVoid, especially going into the fourth quarter and holiday season which I have been preparing the battle plan for. I hope that the powers that be figure out that all of this is an overall negative for everyone involved and we can reduce friction once more at the border. For now, I'll be continuing to ship orders to Canada and keeping the printers running so that when I can open up orders to the USA again, I'll hopefully have your favourite item in stock.
Thank you,
Robert Veitch, FrostyVoid
