It’s a tentative relief to have a new plan for Pickup’s case plastics settled. The other major unknown is costs from tariffs, as well as the knock-on effects on the global supply chain.
This has easily been the largest number of components we’ve ever had in a project, when you consider the 8 plug-in cartridges, most of which have mechanical requirements to perform as intended (probes, lenses, air circulation). I took pride in building a roster of suppliers, getting sample parts, and building certainty that started well before we launched Pickup. That planning has been dashed.
Guess the tariffs
Yes, we have new costs due to tariffs, sometimes unknown. Once again, the policies have changed between the time I started an update and published it. The news this morning that tariffs have dropped significantly is welcome, with caveats. This is a base rate that other more category-specific tariffs may be stacked on top of, and things are changing faster than the government can communicate them.
The US Harmonized Tariff Schedule site, which tells you what items from where get charged what import fees, is hard to understand on the best days given the ways you might interpret how to classify a part. But right now it doesn’t reflect the additional tariffs and reciprocal tariffs that have been flying around the last few months.
I want to say, “Just ship it!” but can’t afford to. We’ve got some components en route that will serve as a test on what tariffs will be in force, at least as of the time they hit the US port, and then I’ll be talking to each supplier to quantify costs and shipping options to minimize our additional costs.
Guess the availability
Even if I could throw money at the problem, some suppliers have thrown up their hands and just won’t sell to US buyers due to the additional grief the new trade rules are causing. It’s annoying because in some cases, we’re talking very inexpensive parts, and even a 145% tariff is no deterrent.
As an example, the diffusion lens for the spectral cartridge that I sourced and tested is no longer available to the US (and to some other countries that I’m finding out by trial and error). The product webpage will actually not load from the US. I am looking for another way to get this lens because I don’t want to have to find alternative parts, test them for performance, and change the cartridge design.
This is exhausting. I’m continuing to purchase components, and we’re getting shipments every week, but repeat this issue a few times and I’ve got a new time suck. I know our customers didn’t sign up for this run of bad luck in a 100-year global trade storm, and I hate writing about it.
We’re stubborn and we’re not giving up, though it’s costing us money and time. To preserve our sanity and budget, we are going to continue proceeding cautiously to do things right. We’re trading speed for cost, because of the increased expenses and changes in our supply chain, we have to engineer things to fight the costs back down.
Crossposted from Pickup Kickstarter update #16