I remember when tariffs took over in April. Because I was on my Babymoon. Was my 1st time OOO in over 6-months. Was a 3 day trip in total.
The ominous texts I started to receive during that trip sent me into a small spiral. The Twitterverse did, too. But it wasn't really online that was making me freak.
It was the TONE of the texts from people around me in this space.
I can explain it as - a little worried but a lotta opportunistic.
Here's an example. A client who had been indicating that they were going to churn for MONTHS churned over those 3 days. By indicating they were going to churn, I mean that they hired internally months-prior for the exact service we provided.
They introduced us to that new hire, and had us train them. A full handover without saying as much. I have no problem with this, by the way. That's agency life and that's good business on their side. In-house it, fine by me. Make us train them, and we will! Again, fine by me.
But this had been diagrammed for months. Clear as day. But the SECOND the news broke of the tariffs really coming into reality, we got a message that the client was leaving because of tariffs. Because of the state of the world, they needed to tighten up and because the future was uncertain (specific to the impact of the tariffs) they needed out right then and they wanted their contracted notice period waved. Did they forget we saw our replacement months ago and that our replacement was as expensive as us?
We waved it (the notice period). Was it because of tariffs that they needed out right then? Of course not. It was because they had what they needed.
A force majeure of sorts but more like a perfect excuse that only assholes could object to.
That's just 1 example! I have more.
The point is that yes tariffs were incredibly disruptive this year to so many and there is an exposure here that does hurt many brands tremendously and that should create action on the brand side. Should create tightening up. Should create better operations.
But the point is also that so many didn't call a spade a spade and pointed to the tariffs to do things they wanted to do all along.
Ties into my earlier observation in this State of Ecommerce series around AI. The 1 about non-technical founders getting 1 demo of 1 AI tool and giving the command to fire half of their team.
This is cut from that cloth. You want to cut half of your team because you want to make more money and even if AI won't come to fruition, you'll make more money in the short term if you put that work on fewer people and you'll FAFO from there.
That moment in April felt like that. Just a point of inflection to tighten up and to do things you were already going to do, but with a wartime cover.
P.S. I've just made the pre-text for this email:
'State of Ecommerce, Vol. 4. The 1 where all hell broke loose because we wanted it to.'
