Suppliers including Rockford, Epsilon, and according to industry members, KENWOOD, have recently announced price increases in response to tariffs. Several other leading vendors are expected to follow suit in the few weeks.
Some of the increases are moderate–at about 10 to 30 percent–even though this falls far short of the 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
Epsilon’s Ronnie Brashear said, “We ate most of the tariff..And we only raised prices on the new stuff that has come in, and on none of the other products that were already in the warehouse.”
In recent weeks, distributors and some retailers have been stockpiling inventory ahead of the price increases.
Vickers AV has been buying an additional 30 to 40 percent worth of inventory and The Wholesale House has been buying 25 to 30 percent more.
Many retailers such as Performance Autosound, WA are loading in inventory. But 7-store Freeman’s Car Stereo, NC is taking a more cautious approach and upping its orders only “a little bit.” “I hear that some retailers are trying to load in, I guess everyone has a different approach,” said Dave Wall.
Dave Elkin at DOW Electronics said, “From a distribution standpoint – one of our major concerns is buying inventory at a tariff price point and then the tariff decreasing dramatically. There just isn’t enough margin for distribution to absorb the difference, and we do not want to own the inventory at an inflated tariff price. We have some plans in place to address this and will initiate them on a case by case basis.”
As we reported earlier, many suppliers have curtailed, if not halted orders to China. And some Chinese factories have stopped taking orders (for fear the supplier won’t pay for the goods if the tariffs remain too high).
For example, Recoil Audio had planned a major US launch this spring but is now limiting its launch mainly to the region of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas due to tariff uncertainty. The company is still bringing in inventory and has shipments on the water, but it is being more cautious in ordering. “We don’t know if we order a bunch of stuff what cost it will land at.”
Bill Basore a former Rockford executive, now consulting in shipping, cautioned suppliers against delaying price increases too long. If the next product order is going to cost more than the current goods, businesses should raise prices now to ensure they have enough money to buy the higher priced goods on the next round, he said.
To get ahead of the tariffs, he added, “If I were a retailer, I would be placing orders now, and if I were a distributor, I would be placing orders like crazy. “
But distributors and suppliers are also trying to balance letting any one or two customers buy up all their inventory.
A DOW statement said, “… we may need to put product allocations in place at some point. We have already been approached by dealers that are trying to corner the market on constrained items, and we declined those sales. We want to make sure inventory is available for all our dealers to help them keep their install bays full.”
Source: https://www.ceoutlook.com/2025/04/22/some-suppliers-start-raising-prices/
