US Customers

To our American Friends and Customers…

We have sadly decided, at least for the immediate future, to put a pause on selling our 100% Canadian-made products to the United States, due to President Trump putting an end to the long-standing ‘de minimis’ exemption, first put in place in 1938, allowing small businesses, like ours, to sell to American customers, tariff free.

The elimination of the de minimis exemption is scheduled to go into effect on August 29, 2025… and at this point, it is unclear what, and how, the duties will be imposed on any American orders we receive.  It has been widely suggested that the shipping service we use (in this case, the United States Postal Service) will have the option, for the next six months, to either charge the appropriate tariff fee (ad valorem duty) (currently 35% for Canada) OR they may opt to charge a flat fee between $80 and $200, regardless of the value of the item being shipped!   USPS has not said which route they will be taking.

The products we sell range from $20 to $100.

Asking our customers to pay an extra randomly-chosen fee on TOP of the price of the item, as well as local state taxes (where applicable), is to us, not part of the customer experience we want to create.  Certainly, the United States Government has the right to choose to put exorbitant fees on small dollar items… but we won’t have our customers getting a surprise notice that their order has arrived at the Post Office… but they owe an additional $80 tariff.

In a few months, hopefully the USPS and US Government figure out how these duties and additional taxes are going to be implemented, how they are calculated, and where they are paid… we can re-open our online businesses to American customers.

In the meantime, we thank you for your past business, and we look forward to a future where we return to being neighborly, and we can visit, shop, and go back and forth with goods… as before.

Again, our apologies, but we do not ever want one of our customers to get an unpleasant surprise at the mailbox.  We sell smiles and joy, sprinkled with a little whimsy.  Frowns are NOT in our inventory.

Sincerely,

 

Lorie & Bob Gray

 

PS   If you have any questions about this, please feel free to reach out to us via our Contact page.  This is an ever-evolving situation, but we work to keep ourselves up to date, and continue to keep our fingers crossed that a reasonable and more sensible solution will be put in place, soon.