Parents, get ready: It looks like it’s going to get a lot more expensive to raise a family — and some places are already raising prices, like one baby and toy store in Washington, DC.
I talked to Elizabeth Mahon, the owner of Three Littles, which she’s run since 2019. She told me price hikes are on the way, and she said they’re because of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
She said she’d have to raise prices on items that are manufactured mostly in China, like the popular UPPAbaby Vista stroller, which will now cost $1,199 — up from $899.
Massachusetts-based UPPAbaby has said it’s passing the increased costs of production onto customers. “Please know that we’ve made every effort behind the scenes to absorb as much of the cost as possible,” the company said in a statement on its Instagram, “but some price increases are unfortunately unavoidable.”
Mahon told me how tariffs are already affecting her store and her customers. And about her biggest worry: that some families won’t be able to afford necessities like car seats at all.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity).
Business Insider: So what’s going on with the price hikes with strollers and car seats?
Elizabeth Mahon: Nuna and UPPAbaby both reached out about a week ago and said, “Hey, this is going to be a new price list moving forward.”
Then, on Monday, we got another email from UPPAbaby with an amended price list. When they first emailed, it was when tariffs were at 54% and now tariffs are 145% — they had to fix the prices to better reflect the current tariffs.
Is this across the whole range of things? Strollers, car seats, accessories?
Yes, pretty much everything is going up in price. Initially, a lot fewer items were included in these price increases. There were still price increases, but they weren’t as drastic or far-reaching. And now, the prices of just about everything that they manufacture have to go up.
So the UPPABaby Vista stroller, which is about $900 for the base model — that’s going up about $300. It’s basically like a 33% increase. Is that about what you’re seeing across the board? 33%?
It depends. Some things are going up 20%, some things are going up 40%. It just depends. But 30% is, I would say, the average.
Have you heard from other manufacturers about tariff increases in other categories? Clothing, toys, books?
A ton. I’ve been getting a phone call or an email a day from our vendors letting us know that the prices are increasing. We’ve received a couple of emails from vendors telling us that they will no longer even be able to entertain a wholesale program.
I do know that some other stroller and car seat brands are chatting about what it would look like to sell exclusively online. This would be a huge detriment to families because they won’t be able to test them out in person.
What are you hearing from your customers?
I think there’s a lot of panic buying. People are hurrying up to buy car seats that maybe they don’t need yet because they are worried about these price increases. We’ve been talking to a lot of customers who are considering buying for children they don’t even have yet so that they can get these prices.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge that we have a shop in a community where there’s a lot of privilege.
I’ve heard a lot on social media that these price hikes aren’t going to deter people who are shopping for these more expensive brands. But I absolutely disagree. I’ve heard daily from people who have said, “This stroller at $899 was already a huge splurge for me, and $1,200 is just too far out of my price range.”
Beyond that, the bigger conversation I think is that there are going to be many families who just cannot afford a stroller for their kids or a car seat for their child, period. Even the lower-end products — there is no option to just buy exclusively American.
There is no option to just not use a car seat. You have to have it, but we’re going to see price increases across every brand no matter what if they’re manufactured in China.
With car seats, that’s the kind of item that — unlike strollers — it’s really recommended you don’t get one used, right?
Absolutely. I am a child passenger safety technician, and we just would never recommend getting a secondhand car seat because there is no way to prove that that car seat has not been in a crash, which makes it no longer safe to use.
As a small-business owner, how will these price increases affect your bottom line?
I’ve just had to make some really big decisions already and spend money that we didn’t really have to spend on extra inventory because these tariff hikes and the hysteria surrounding these new inflated prices are causing a lot of people to buy.
There are going to be a lot of gaps where people aren’t going to be able to buy things when they need them. That’s because people are buying convertible car seats today for kids who won’t fit in it for a year. The people who need that car seat now might not be able to get it because it’s sold out. The manufacturing facilities can’t produce at a faster rate than they had already planned on, or they don’t have the materials, or they don’t have the money, or they’re trying to navigate the tariffs.
Are you worried about what will happen having to pass on the prices to customers if that will turn customers away from your store?
Absolutely. We already have customers who will come into the shop and demo the products we have and then come back in and tell us they bought them secondhand. And that’s everyone’s prerogative. I totally understand why people do that. The baby industry is expensive and the products we sell are on the higher-end. But I think that we’ll be starting to see a lot more of that.
I do think we’ll see the resale market inching up higher, which will make some of these products that people used to be able to buy secondhand unaffordable, too.
Even more than business, I’m worried that there are going to be families that aren’t able to get seats for their children at all because they can’t afford them.
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