VANCOUVER — With the near-constant stream of tariff announcements and reversals from the White House complicating planning, retailers are forced to adapt to ever-changing business circumstances on the fly.
Canadian e-commerce retailer Simpli Home is navigating the tariff merry-go-round by staying proactive and nimble, finding efficiencies where it can, all while staying realistic about the impacts of continued uncertainty.
“We reduced our forecast for the year,” CEO Yoram Weinreich told Furniture Today. “We looked at consumer spending and affordability, as this environment is definitely inflationary.”
As things stand now, Weinreich said the company plans to increase prices next month if planned tariffs go into effect.
“We have to be prudent and cautious,” he said. “We monitor the situation daily and see where things stand. April 2 is going to be a big day. We’re sitting in anticipation of, sadly, having to pass on the price increases.”
Price increases are not the be-all and end-all of Simpli Home’s strategy, Weinreich cautioned. The company is also taking a hard look at where it can find savings.
“In the past number of months, we’ve really battened down the hatches,” he said. “We’ve found money and innovated and challenged every single line item, every expense, in order to reduce our break-even to as low as it can go and become really efficient. We’re not believing any assumptions that we had made in the past.
“I’m not only talking staffing,” Weinreich continued. “I’m talking everything from freight to warehousing, to shipping and handling, to returns analysis. We’ve also gone to our factories and tried to get whatever reductions we can through just negotiation or re-engineering.”
Although it may be too soon to fully gauge the cumulative effect of continued back-and-forth policy from the Trump administration, Weinreich cautioned against a wait-and-see attitude from the industry.
“The problem with good times is that you can be fat and stupid,” he quipped. “The issue with more challenging times is you’ve got to do your work, and do your work well, both from a cost standpoint and an opportunity standpoint.”
Challenging assumptions is another indispensable component of a successful strategy in this environment, according to Weinreich.
“You really have to be shrewd,” he said. “You have to challenge yourself, not accept whatever norms you’ve built, and be nimble. Talk to a lot of people, get a lot of ideas. You can’t afford to sit on your hands.”
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