The Australian swimwear brand Bydee has enjoyed wonderful growth in the U.S. over the last few years. Launching in Australia in 2013 and expanding to the U.S. in 2020, Bydee has seen its American sales grow 500% since 2022. The U.S. now makes up more than half of Bydee’s revenue.
But now, that growth has a new challenge. On the evening of February 6, Bydee took to its Instagram to post an update for customers, where it has more than 480,000 followers. Due to the strict tariffs imposed on imports to the U.S., Bydee announced that it would be implementing duty costs to its online checkout. It’s a solution Bydee founder, CEO and creative director Dessy Hairis tried to avoid. Bydee ships most of its product from Australia, a country not directly targeted by Trump’s tariffs but one of many countries caught in the crossfire between the U.S. and China.
“After exploring every possible way to absorb these costs, we’ve had to make the decision to turn on duties at checkout,” Hairis wrote in the post. “At Bydee our commitment is always to remain transparent. Please know that we’re actively working on a long term solution to make this a temporary adjustment and not a permanent change.”
Late on Friday afternoon, President Trump announced a pause on the tariffs until more details can be worked out. That gave Bydee the chance to change course. A Bydee spokesperson told Glossy the brand will ship the inventory it already has in warehouses in the U.S. and the duties won’t be implemented, for now.
Bydee is just one hundreds of businesses scrambling to deal with rapidly changing rules around international imports. Last week, the USPS changed course in a matter of hours, first announcing that it would no longer handle packages imported from China only to reverse that decision later the same day.
Influencers who normally post about sales and deals are advising their followers to buy full-price goods from brands like Lululemon in anticipation of more price increases. In addition to tariffs, other issues like the spread of bird flu are causing restaurants like Waffle House to add a surcharge for eggs. It’s an unprecedented and chaotic time for consumers, already pressured by stagnating wages and now dealing with rapid price increases, and brands, which are deciding how to deal with their own increased costs.
“Tariffs have created a huge issues for brands to manage, realizing the added cost could be put on the customer who already have tight budgets,” said Amanda Jane Valentine, a former designer and now consultant for luxury brands and mills. “The last thing a brand wants is to lose their beloved customer base by shifting all of the prices onto them.”
But brands also don’t want to lose their margins, and startups looking to grow don’t often have the luxury of extra cash they can eat into for an unknown period of time while figuring out how to deal with a rapidly changing trade arrangement. That means brands like Bydee are more frequently having to consider passing additional costs on to the customer.
“I absolutely see the tariffs affecting consumers in the fashion industry,” said Ashley Full, co-founder of Amour781, a luxury plus-size boutique based in Florida. “The cost, unfortunately, will hit buyers here in the U.S. as the retailers will have to make the retail price of goods higher to keep their current margins. As a US retailer, we will not be making more money. If anything, there will be a loss as customers tighten their purse strings in response to the higher prices.”
But raising prices isn’t all brands can do. Veriphy, a Los Angeles-based skin-care company that also has operations in Canada, opted to split its inventory. Before the tariffs, all of its goods were shipped between the U.S. and Canada from one place. Now, Veriphy has split its inventory between the two countries, shipping U.S. orders from a warehouse in California and Canadian orders from a different warehouse in Canada to avoid the extra fees.
“We’ve also worked with our manufacturer to look for more local additional supplies,” said Lindsay Nahmiache, CEO of Veriphy. “Normally, the ordering cycle is that we would order six months in advance of needing more materials to produce, but we’ve already started ordering materials 12 months in advance just to give us time and leverage to make sure we can get everything we need.”
