No one should be surprised to hear this. But with the recent tariffs, things are going to be getting even worse. Yes, we ALL pay these tariffs–they are not paid by the tariffed country, despite political misinformation. They are like a slow, steady sales tax that is titrated out of our collective pocketbooks a little at a time. The presumption is that most of us won’t notice this slow drip. But when you produce products or provide services that involve materials, you DO experience it. And this added cost MUST be passed on to customers; there is no choice.
We cannot practice antiquarian clock restoration from tents or curbsides, so we need to keep a roof over our heads. That doesn’t happen by keeping prices the same when our costs are ballooning. So apologies in advance, but prices will be steadily increasing over the next year or more. We’ll do our best as always to keep them in control, but it seems that as long as tariffs are being imposed on imports, so our prices will steadily increase.
Sometimes we are forced to purchase materials from outside the US–yes, even Canada, the UK, and other countries. We expect these tariffs will add significantly to these costs.
You will no doubt see price increases for virtually everything you buy. There is this misbelief that it will force manufacturing back to the USA. Well, it will NEVER have that effect short-term. Even if it is economical (and it rarely is), it’s a slow process that could take 5-10 years or more. And small companies that don’t have the muscle to move their manufacturing here (which is the vast majority of the horological suppliers) will end up paying more. And you, the customer, will pay the difference.
Again, apologies in advance.