Weekly Update: Yup, the Tariffs Affect me too (Patreon)

Hey Saucy Ones,

AN UPDATE I'M MAKING JUST BEFORE THIS POST GOES LIVE:

I spent all of last night and most of this morning crunching numbers and checking to see what is and is not getting hit with a tariff and as of now the tentative answer is that both patches and aprons can happen, but if and only if I do not discount the yearly pledge rate. Additionally, I don't have any examples to show off in the videos because if I want to do this I can absolutely not have any excess patches or aprons; I can only order and produce as many patches and aprons as is necessary to fulfill pledges plus a few more in case of postal service oopsies. on that note, I'm also gonna have to be a real hardass about having it being on you guys to make sure your address is perfect because I really, really, cannot afford to be shipping replacement aprons across the ocean between rising shipping costs and tariffs on all my materials.

It's going to be a lot leaner for me to get this done, but I'm not just gonna abandon this tradition because the circuses and governments or the world are indistinguishable from one another. I've dealt with worse crises before; it comes with the territory of being a child of the Polycrisis.

[Original Post Below]

So let's just get this out of the way:

as of writing this the patches are most likely a no-go for this year's Halloween in July and the Aprons are a toss-up. Since I'm no longer able to make the patches myself unless I want to buy and find a place in my home for a $15,000 machine the size of a refrigerator (which is probably going to cost A LOT more now since it's not of US origin) and the place that I got the second run of patches from manufactures them in China. Based on how things are going now the patches went from and easy thing to give out to after the tariffs and postage they'd be too pricey on my end to offer them. I really hate to do this, but I think this year I'm gonna have to skip patches.

The Complicated Task of Sending an Apron to Literally Anywhere in the Developed World:

Aprons are a trickier issue. I've already gotten to two thirds of the way to being done with layaway for the heat press and once I paid off my car Ahead of schedule this month I was gonna just pay the remaining balance. However, I still haven't got the printer I'd need to make my own sublimation graphics and I'm not in a position to just panic buy it right this instant. Hell, even if I did do that I might get slapped with a gnarly tariff when I try to take delivery of it. Heck that could happen with the aprons too. I'm currently watching the price of the bulk aprons like a hawk right about now and they've only gone up a little so far, but the aprons themselves are by far the cheapest part of making the Halloween in July Aprons.

What's really been the hardest part of getting those aprons out is the shipping costs. I recently did my taxes which involved tallying up all my expenses to see what I was allowed to deduct and by far my single largest business expense was postage, and that was only half the postage for last year's Halloween in July because thanks to the move I ended up sending half the aprons this year. The Aprons are at the $5 tier on a yearly pledge for a reason. It used to be that while it only cost me $5 to send an apron in the US, $10 to send one to Canada, Mexico, or the EU, and $15-$20 to send something to Oceania, last year it was more like $5 for the US because I just barely qualify for the discounted business rate at the USPS and now it's $18-$22+ to send an apron anywhere outside of the US' borders. I don't even want to think about what postage is gonna cost this year as everyone is bilking each other for whatever they can get in import/export fees.

The way it was was that while I do get more money from US-Based pledges, that money is used to cover the extra cost of shipping things outside of US borders. I don't sell these, the aprons and patches are free gifts given as a thank-you for pledging during HiJ and no other time and I'm not going to set up a storefront and charge shipping on a free gift.

The Major Issue of All of This:

The biggest problem with all of this is that I can't just not do the Halloween in July gift incentives. Halloween in July pledges account for over a quarter of my total yearly income. I already made the call that this year I can't discount the yearly pledges as shipping is eating me alive as it is but I also know better than to push the aprons up Another tier because I'd lose more than I'd gain. Your generosity is what helps me live the dream and I don't want to squeeze you all because the going is getting tough.

I had a lot of ambitious plans for this year's HiJ... had being the operative word. I was thinking about making something super special like a really high end, unique patch or some other cool thing for Sauce L0rds, really taking advantage of having someone else to make my patches to make the baseline patches really cool, and the aprons are going to have a design that's over twice as large as they used to be now that I'm getting my own heat press. This is now all on hold until I see how this tariff war shakes out: while skipping the HiJ rewards and hoping that you all choose to re-up out of goodwill that I'll come back with even better stuff next year would be a massive hit on my income, attempting to trudge through the rewards anyway without knowing how hard I'm gonna get hit could be even worse. Depending on how extreme things get I could end up potentially losing money on fulfilling Halloween in July rewards.

Where we are now:

As things stand I conveniently haven't finished and encoded any of the Halloween in July videos. I was kinda slacking on them and leaving them half-edited because I had so much other stuff to do but in the end it worked out for me. The videos are still happening as that's the only way you get PTO in this internet game, but as they are I'm gonna leave them in project form for now because I don't know I'm I'm going to be able to offer pledge rewards or not. I think as it stands I'm gonna keep making the videos and making payments on my Heat Press, but I'm not going to finalize any videos until late June because I just don't know if it's even feasible for me to off any patron rewards this year, however at the same time I'm not sure if it's feasible for me to not offer those rewards. We'll have to wait and see.

There was actually a bunch of other stuff I wanted to talk about this week but the very idea of these damn tariffs are eating everything alive, including my time and energy to talk about other things.

Stay saucy.