American Liberation Day and effect to Hunting Clothing Costs?

[Brado16]

With the large reciprocal tariffs hitting a lot of the South East Asian countries yesterday, what impact do you expect a lot of the major hunting clothing lines to do with their upcoming pricing? As much as I love my Sitka, Kuiu and First Lite clothing, I can’t help but think these companies are scrambling right now trying to figure out which way is up right now. Do you think we will see production stop while these companies figure out what to do with their current production? Will they scramble to find the “least” tariffed country and move production there? Keep producing as normal and pass price increases to us the consumer? Look at brining manufacturing back to the USA?

Curious of your thoughts on what all of this means for our hunting lives which we are all so passionate about?

 

[txtransplant]

Price go up.

Hold onto your butt. Gonna be a lot of inflation across the board.

 

[7RemMag]

Fact of the matter is prices are going to go up. Not many industries that aren't going to feel this in some capacity. As said above, hang on to your hats...It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

 

[birdhunter]

Sadly alot of this stuff is made in Vietnam along with alot of sportswear like adi and nike.But it looks like they have already agreed to end/greatly reduce tariffs on US Imports and alot of those stocks have already rebounded today.I think personally its too early to panic and rush to buy stuff.Just my 2 cents.

 

[SWFLhntr]

Just got my 2nd Dakota hoody for $190. Feeling pretty good about myself.
Wife doesn’t quite get it……

 

[wyosam]

The cost of being a stylish hunter just went waaay up.


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[SWFLhntr]

Stylish indeed. Don’t forget comfortable.

 

[sneaky]

Stop buying new gear, they haven't reinvented the wheel. I can't think of anything I really "need" vs want. I can hold off.

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[txtransplant]

Stop buying new gear, they haven't reinvented the wheel. I can't think of anything I really "need" vs want. I can hold off.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

The problem is that once prices go up, they’ll never go back down.

If everything goes up 20% in the next year, and then the tariffs are lifted, literally nobody is going to reduce their prices back down.

 

[Dennis]

Buy used from Rokslide classified which saves you money and give fellow Americans a few bucks to spend else where.

 

[TaperPin]

My favorite used stuff on eBay has been going up and selling quick. Stop buying used and just pay whatever it costs. It’s making it hard on those of us that are cheap and like to hoard gear.

 

[mt terry d]

American Made will go up.
Less competition= higher cost (less supply vs demand)
Less laws/free trade=lower cost of production.
That's why American companies move.

 

[TaperPin]

Vietnamese apparel makers earn something under $6k a year. I wonder how many of those products will actually change to being made in the us. Most of that markup is US based company overhead and profit. If raw materials and labor went up 20% and the final cost of the item when up 5% why move production?

Tikka shooters aren’t going to switch to American made. Same for high end scopes and other optics.

Looking at everything at Target stores, if the manufacturing cost of any of it went up a similar amount I don’t see it changing manufacturing location a great deal, especially since US material prices are going up.

What will go up is the effective tax rate for each of us - tariffs are a sales tax. Invest that money in training for the working class, not tax breaks for the richest guys in the world.

 

[Macintosh]

I do this stuff for a living. It all depends on the company's margin structure how it will affect them, a manufacturer that sells to retailers will have a different margin structure than one who only/mainly sells direct to consumer, and it depends on what their margin threshholds are. But, here's a snapshot of what a tariff will do for your typical outdoor outerwear that is sold thru a retailer versus sold thru a DTC (direct to consumer) company, all starting with the exact same product at exactly the same cost. The margins shown were typical for a company I used to work for who made top-quality outdoor outerwear, which I think kept a pretty low margin compared to competitors. But its clear that as well as having a pricing advantage in general, a DTC company will also probably be less affected by tariffs. A lot of outerwear made in asia already had very high tariffs--a lot of leather boots and waterproof breatheable outerwear from china already had 30+% tariffs before any of this happened--but you can see the general effect here. Bottom line, a 30% tariff does not equal exactly a 30% price increase b/c the tariff is applied only to the price on the commercial invoice when it enters the country...in this example $50. It also depends on the margin a company is willing/able to settle for, it might not change things too much for a consumer, it may just affect some companies more than others. Note the DTC company WITH a 30% tariff makes almost double the margin while selling at the same retail price as the wholesale company does without the tariff...yes, there is an additional layer of cost and possibly risk associated with selling direct, but this illustrates precisely why all the companies out there are primarily DTC.

 

[Macintosh]

Also, the timelines to produce apparel are long. For a lot (most?) of the companies on the OP's list, the clothing that will be for sale for the 2025 hunting season is already being produced...that means a large % of the price has already been spent, since materials have already been purchased and shipped to the factory, and the factory is already working on producing it. A global company might be able to shift some ofthe product to a different market to avoid a tariff, but at this point for many companies they've lost the ability to cancel an order that was supposed to deliver over the summer, they'll just have to make due as best they can.

 

[TaperPin]

I had an interesting conversation with the head sewing machine maintenance dude at a large scale west coast based outdoor products manufacturer. When a new product line comes out he orders the equipment, installs machines, troubleshoots sewing issues and trains the operators. Equipment wise, adding capacity is fairly straight forward with electricians running more power and lights into empty warehouse space, bathrooms get built to match the number of people, necessary code inspections and requirements, and the generic sewing related stuff goes in fairly quickly. Specialty folders and binding can require some time to fine tune, but they are used to making things work so it’s not rocket science. Training new operators is a few days to a week on an old machine getting over the fear of an industrial going a few thousand finger stabs per minute, then at least a few weeks doing basic sewing tasks until they graduate onto the main floor.

A company I worked for added a few bathrooms, break rooms and offices to warehouse space and you have the architect’s timeline of a month or two, building plan delays of another month, plumbers have concrete to cut and new waste lines installed, inspected and concrete patched. Then a few days to a few weeks of rough framing followed by plumbing, electrical, and venting rough in and an inspection. Sheetrock, painters, finish plumbing and electrical and an inspection. Stall and hardware installs, doors and misc. followed by a final. From calling the architect until the first employee takes a dump is 4 months if you’re lucky. The last one I was a part of was delayed 3 months because the new electrical service install was backed up, and another month because the building department was backed up.

Doing junior high school math, that’s 4 to 9 months before the first practice stitch, and another month before new hires can be fully functional. If there’s a flood of new sewing, that makes finding the bodies to do it more expensive, but he said they are like hiring warehouse workers - just increase the pay and plenty of them will come out of the woodwork. Still, nobody is getting rich doing warehouse work or commercial sewing.

 

[Macintosh]

I had an interesting conversation with the head sewing machine maintenance dude at a large scale west coast based outdoor products manufacturer. When a new product line comes out he orders the equipment, installs machines, troubleshoots sewing issues and trains the operators. Equipment wise, adding capacity is fairly straight forward with electricians running more power and lights into empty warehouse space, bathrooms get built to match the number of people, necessary code inspections and requirements, and the generic sewing related stuff goes in fairly quickly. Specialty folders and binding can require some time to fine tune, but they are used to making things work so it’s not rocket science. Training new operators is a few days to a week on an old machine getting over the fear of an industrial going a few thousand finger stabs per minute, then at least a few weeks doing basic sewing tasks until they graduate onto the main floor.

A company I worked for added a few bathrooms, break rooms and offices to warehouse space and you have the architect’s timeline of a month or two, building plan delays of another month, plumbers have concrete to cut and new waste lines installed, inspected and concrete patched. Then a few days to a few weeks of rough framing followed by plumbing, electrical, and venting rough in and an inspection. Sheetrock, painters, finish plumbing and electrical and an inspection. Stall and hardware installs, doors and misc. followed by a final. From calling the architect until the first employee takes a dump is 4 months if you’re lucky. The last one I was a part of was delayed 3 months because the new electrical service install was backed up, and another month because the building department was backed up.

Doing junior high school math, that’s 4 to 9 months before the first practice stitch, and another month before new hires can be fully functional. If there’s a flood of new sewing, that makes finding the bodies to do it more expensive, but he said they are like hiring warehouse workers - just increase the pay and plenty of them will come out of the woodwork. Still, nobody is getting rich doing warehouse work or commercial sewing.

So just figure 4-6 months before you can make that first practice stitch. From today, mid april, that puts opening date on our new sewing machine shop between mid august and mid october. Figure getting materials there maybe as construction is finalized, but you have to pattern, cut fabric, make it, then package and ship to warehouse. That means those products arent available to the market at an absolute minimum until middle of next fall, if not late fall, and thats if we break ground literally TODAY. realistically we’re talking about 2026 product, and thats small cottage-industry speed. At the speed of a larger company booking factory time with an independent sew shop, with our factory a less than done deal its far more likely we’re not fully ramped up till fall of 26, with 2027 really being year we can show that we are operating and get some build orders. Working in this industry in the past our development timeline for this stuff was fully 2 years on a lot of products, and ideally you are doing a product start to finish with the same factory so as not to lose time re-doing samples, quotes, spec sheets, etc.

Bottom line we’re looking at 9 months or close to a year before many/most companies could possibly be selling products made in a new facility in the US. For sure it can be done, it just doesnt happen overnight.