Hey Everybody!

I'll need to temporarily close the store. I estimate this will be 1 week, at least I'm hoping (if not less).

**outstanding orders are NOT involved in this, I'm shipping those out. wholesalers with active contracts i'll honor, but all other discussions are unfortunately paused pending reevaluation**

This is for two reasons. The first is... we just had our baby girl! Mila Grace was born on 4/6... and is a cutie-pie, healthy, and a poop-monster. I need to take some time to take over all the household/other duties until this settles a bit, and have some bonding time with her at the start. I'm finding it very difficult to juggle work and a newborn while having another child (5) in the house. Its much different with two, than one. Working for myself, 'paternity leave' isn't something that you really put on the calendar, but I should prioritize the right things. So, I am.

Secondly.... as I'm sure everyone is aware, the new tariffs regime has made doing any sort of business calculations nearly impossible, and our margins literally make zero sense all of a sudden. A price increase has been inevitable for some time, but I've stubbornly avoided doing this because, frankly, I'm optimistic 'things will get better' (inflationary-wise) and probably naively so. And, this is despite my attempts to on-shore our supply chain as much as I could in the last two years or so. It simply isn't a possibility to vertically on-shore and integrate one's supply chain without massive amounts of capital, which is obviously not the case for someone in a niche market.

However, it is absolutely impossible for me to make any sort of business projection right now, and that is.... well, its not how any of this is meant to work. In the past 24-hours of writing this, I think rates have gone up enough it wiped our margins out on nearly everything. In order to keep Kitsch-Bent going, I've got to make some sort of adjustment. Or else we are simply facing the issue of when things run out of stock, the doors close. I've been doing this 19+ years so far, and haven't encountered a dilemma like this (and that's including the mess of 2008/2009).

With that being said, I hope you all will understand this happening, and accept it as a necessity. We could really use the support right now, not just as a business but as a family, and Kitsch-Bent is how we live.

I know I'm not the only person who is feeling an immense amount of trepidation currently, solely from a financial perspective, and although it means absolutely nothing in terms of making anything better I wanted to explain the reasoning behind the upcoming changes. If I could eat this myself, I would, and frankly have been for a while. The changes have happened so incredibly fast, I've got to respond to whatever this new world order is, or is going to be.