Hello again folks! Very sorry for missing the Saturday update yesterday! I was invited to visit with some extended family early in the morning and forgot all about it [ if my routine is disrupted apparently I forget how to do everything ] and by the time I realized, I was inebriated ^^; So I apologize for that!
I had a bit of a busy week between making all the restock orders, worrying about the new tariff situation with the states, and doing a bunch of social stuff [ visting friends for their birthdays, visiting with family, meeting a family member's support group for a picnic ]
The good news is that the restock orders have been made! The bad news is that I made them and fully spent the money and THEN immediately found out that I might have difficulty selling things to the states 😮💨 But hopefully everything will work out anyway. This stuff isn't perishable so if it takes a long time to sell that's fine.
Here's a list of old items that will be restocked:
All classic dakimakuras [ Strade, Ren, Lawrence, and Fox ]
All bloody portrait keychains [ Strade, Ren, Lawrence ]
All fullbody keychains [ Strade, Ren, Lawrence, Derek, Celia, Mason, Komodo, Jack, and Fox ]
All hard enamel pins [ Strade heart, Ren heart, Lawrence heart, Shock collar, Strade arm patch, Fox's logo ]
And here's a list of new items that will be coming:
The plushies are separate from this but are still being manufactured
New hard enamel YKMET logo pin
YKMET:Strade Strade and Ren shiny foil keychains
YKMET:Strade Strade and Ren standees
I've also been keeping in close contact with my contact at Vograce, and they've been getting back to me very quickly. They've already made proofs of everything and I've approved them all as of this morning.
The new keychains and new pin will cost $13CAD each. This is 1CAD more than normal, because they cost more to produce [ the keychains have a shiny foil layer and the pin has added glow in the dark powder in the center ]
I'm thinking the standees will be $25CAD. The bases are about 100mm diameter [ round bases ] and they are 162mm tall [ Strade ] and 147mm tall [ Ren ]. I also decided not to have them printed full-bleed after all, since I think it would make them more delicate and I worried that any small misalignment in printing would cut off the outlines of the art- my particular art style is pretty heavily dependent on the inking/outlines.
New item proofs that I approved:
[ sorry about the low resolution and watermarks but these are production-ready so I need to be extra careful ^^; ]
Now I probably won't be actually getting these for a fair while yet. They need to be produced [ which will take weeks ] and then shipped to me [ which also takes weeks ].
------------------
But it's honestly a pretty good time for my shop to be empty since there's so much chaos and confusion again regarding the US tariffs- and I know that absolutely no-one wants to hear this, but there's a non-zero chance that Canada Post might strike again too. [ Yeah, that situation STILL hasn't been resolved. There's a wider strike situation happening in Canada where flight attendants just went on strike, were ordered back to work by the government, and disobeyed that order to keep striking and possibly reached a real deal, so everyone else is wanting to fight back against corporate parasitism now ]
The tariff situation is honestly a total shitshow even by itself though. We got barely any notice because the US 'president' changes his mind every 4 seconds on everything. It's also compounded by Etsy and Canada Post not being ready for this situation, which is also objectively stupid.
Other countries have had tariffs that affect small orders for ages, but everyone is kind of losing their mind now that the US is changing policy because of the assumption that US customers won't understand what's happening and collectively melt down. If a customer in the UK for instance ordered a few dakis from me, they'd very likely have their package held by the postal service until they pay their import tax [ which is what tariffs are ]. That UK customer is used to this and will pay the tax and collect their item.
Etsy is assuming that US customers will simply not understand this, rage about a new fee when they try to collect their package, and refuse delivery en masse, clogging up the border and postal system with returns [ along with generating a ton of bad reviews for sellers ]. So what they're doing instead is fully shutting down their shipping labels temporarily until they can create online tools for DDP [ Delivery Duty Paid ] shipping. This is when a customer pre-pays their tariff taxes when they buy their items, so that they aren't charged when the package hits the border. This way of doing it is smoother and will be less confusing for US customers.
What will the tariff rate actually be? I don't know for sure because I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the CUSMA agreement, but I think it's a fair assumption that my items may be taxed under the new base rate for Canadian products: 35%. That means that once the DDP shipping is set up, US customers may have to pay 35% of what my products are worth as an extra tax to their government [ as a punishment for ordering products that weren't made in the USA ].
I know this is horse shit and it's outrageous and it will probably make my merch too expensive for a lot of people. I'm afraid that's the point.
I want to make it really crystal clear that I am not charging this 35%. I do not get that money. That money is being charged by the US government. It is going to trump.
------------------
All of this is complicated but my plan is still the same. I'm just going to keep doing my business however I can. I'm sure this won't be the last challenge I [ or other adult-content creators ] face.
Anyway! Sorry again for forgetting to post yesterday! It's been crazy hahaaa
Here is some pics of Willow as an extra apology [ She's doing great! She was really scared for her vet visit on Thursday but she made it through and got a nice tube treat when she got home! ]
It's a little hard to see but that's the best pic I've gotten so far of her extra toes [ she's a polydactyl- she has 7 toes with claws on each of her front paws ] Many beans!
------------------
Stay safe and stick together. Thank you so much for your support, and see you next week!