Wedding Business Solutions

Shane McMurray - How do tariffs and supply chain issues affect wedding businesses?

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Shane McMurray - How do tariffs and supply chain issues affect wedding businesses?

What if your costs doubled overnight? What happens to your business when tariffs and supply chain issues change in a heartbeat? Are you relying too much on a single supplier? In this episode, I talk about the unpredictable nature of tariffs, how they impact different segments of the wedding industry—from bridal shops to service providers—and what proactive steps you can take, like contract updates and diversifying your supply chain, to stay resilient in uncertain times.

Listen to this new episode for practical ideas on protecting your business, managing costs, and preparing your contracts for sudden market shifts.


About Shane:
Shane helps businesses grow profits, attract qualified leads, refine pricing, close more sales, and uncover key opportunities using unbiased, independent research on the wedding market. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, and more, and is trusted by government agencies, investors, and researchers. With a B.S. in IT, an MBA in E-Business, and over 30 years' experience in data and 20 years in wedding industry research, he deliver insights that identify your core customer and sharpen your marketing strategy.


Link: https://wedding.report/


Contact Shane:
LinkedIn - Shane McMurray
Text or call 520-906-8025


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Tariffs, supply chain, so much uncertainty. Now listen to this episode and find out how it will affect you. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have my friend Shane McMurray on to talk about the craziness that's going on in the marketplace these days. Shane, welcome.

Hey, Alan, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

If you don't know Shane in the wedding report, you should. He's got a great information that he puts out about stats. Shane, how often do you put out the wedding report?

Well, we do stuff all year round, but a general update every year for what's going on. Sure, yeah.

Right. So the reason I invited Shane on right now is because I got an email where it was talking about the impact of tariffs. Now we're not going to talk about specific numbers with tariffs because between when we record this and probably when we stop recording this, it will have changed already. But the concept is still there because it's affected things not just with those numbers, but it's affected people ordering, not ordering or whatever. So, Shane, what do you, what do you, first of all, what prompted you to put that out? Because that was not your annual thing. This was a, you know, summary of impact by segment from minimal to severe ratings.

Yeah, I really did it because it affects, you know, there are different segments in this business. Right. We all have different, there's, I don't know, 17 or so different segments in the business. And I really wanted to understand what the impact was for each one. And I wanted people to understand what their impact could be. You know, so that was really the reason I, I did it.

And what I loved about it is, you know, there's obvious ones because I've been doing a lot of stuff with bridal shops and, you know, a lot of dresses come from China. And that's an, that's an obvious one. Right. So the, if, if the tariff is X, you know, who's going to, who's going to eat that or not eat that or, you know, you can't charge a customer more for something that you've already taken the sale for. Right. So that was an obvious one. But then there were so many other things in there that weren't quite as obvious where it could affect it. So what, was there anything that surprised you?

I mean, not really knowing that most of the products that we purchase, you know, whether it's dresses or stuff that we buy for, for decorations, things like that, accessories are already, you know, most of those are made in China or Outside the country, we just don't have the capacity to make them anymore and we can't make them as cheap. So we get them from outside the country and that's. That would. Yeah, nothing really surprised me there. The big thing probably is that if you are in a service business, part of it where you don't necessarily are impacted by buying products, if you have to buy new equipment or something breaks, then you could be impacted. Right? So.

Right. And that's what I was looking there. That's the. It may not affect you today, but there is an effect every time you have to buy equipment. Right. Whether it's the price just went up or in the case of this, the price could jump all of a sudden from one day to the next because of that tariff. But something that I've been noticing is people in Seattle, friends of mine in Seattle, commenting on how the port of Seattle is like, quiet, like, no ships coming in. The port of L.

A. No ships coming in. And is it that the ships are sitting out at sea waiting to come in, or they never. They never left China?

I've been reading that they pretty much never left. I mean, a lot of people cancel canceled orders and basically the manufacturing companies stopped manufacturing goods because of the cost. Right. It's just. It's not. You can't pay it if you. If you have something sitting out there for a million dollars and you have to pay a million dollars in tariffs already, and then all of a sudden you've got this new thing that you've already paid for, you've already priced. I mean, a lot of manufacturers will price their goods in China as they're made.

And when they've shipped over here, they pay the tariff and then they get them in the store, but they're already priced. Well, what happens when you've already paid for all that? Now you've got double or even a 1.5 times the existing tariff, and then all of a sudden you've got to get a team there to logistically reprice everything and then get it redistributed. And then this is just a nightmare. So I would imagine a lot of companies just like, you know what, Forget it. We're not even going to order right now. We're just going to have. We're just going to have to run out.

That's right now. Now, when does the tariff get paid?

The tariffs get paid when you receive. When the company that's buying the good receives the good when it comes in the port. You have to pay it before it's released.

Right. So the manufacturer is not paying it directly. A country is not paying it directly. The person who ordered those goods from that manufacturer when they take possession of those goods. Right, that's, that's correct. That's what it is. Right. So like you said, if a boat left wherever it left China, it left Vietnam, it left Bangladesh or whatever, you know what the manufactured cost of that is to you?

You already know. Yeah, you already know.

Right. But that those ships aren't coming here in a day. So by the time that ship gets to a port, if that stuff comes off the port and you take possession. So if I read right, there are companies that will just abandon the goods. Right. They'll just say, listen, it's not worth.

It to not pay the tariff. And then, I mean, I don't know how much of that actually probably happened, but I mean, I'm sure there's good sitting there that no one's paying the. I'm not paying the tariff. Right. So there it is, you know, but they lost the money on it. Right. Because the goods are. They already paid for the goods most of the time.

Right, right. But you know, at the time of this recording, you know, tariffs have been as high as over 150% on certain goods. So you're saying, okay, my cost is X now I have one and a half times that in a tariff on top of my cost of that, I'm going to lose money on it. I'll lose less money by just saying it's not.

Probably depending on what it is, you might lose less money just, just demanding it. Yeah, because you're gonna have to pay double the stuff tariff, tax and then you've got to figure out how to reprice and distribute and then basically pass on that cost to your consumer. And they may or may not be willing to pay that.

Exactly. I mean, there's only so much elasticity there. I've seen some, like with the bridal shops, there were some manufacturers saying, listen, we'll absorb some of that. You'll absorb some. And this way your price won't be as high, but still it's, you know, a lot higher. And then it's come down. And again, between when we're recording and.

Whenever you guys are listening to this tomorrow. Right, right.

Because you know this recording is going to live forever. So you could be listening to this a year from now and the situation's completely different in one way or another. But you know, also think when people talk about bringing manufacturing here, the raw materials might still come from outside the country. Be affected by the. Be affected by a tariff. Right?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. We don't produce all the raw materials. And then even if we could move the manufacturing here, I mean, it's. It takes years to move manufacturing here. That doesn't happen overnight, so.

Right, well. And the equipment to do that manufacturing could very well.

Where does that come from?

Right, right. Or the, or the metal to make that, machinery to do that, or the computer stuff for that robot to assemble, whatever, you know, all of that.

Well, a lot of times, even if we manufacture or let's say we mine a metal here, we may not actually produce the final product in this country. We might ship it out and then get. It may go somewhere else. Like car parts. I don't know if you. I mean, I learned this, but car parts, even, let's say they made in Mexico. Well, they might be made in Mexico. They'll come to the U.S.

well, they may ship them back to Canada and then Canada will ship them back to us and so there's like double tariff situation happening there. Right. Crazy, right?

That was the whole point of NAFTA was to have this, this free trade zone. So you could do that. If you look at the window sticker, I bought a car six months ago. And if you look at a window sticker, it tells you the percentage of parts that came from different places. So the car might be manufactured in Tennessee, but those parts have come from different places. I saw an ad the other day. I think it was the, the Polestar EV electric vehicle. And, and it.

Big print. Assembled in the U.S. okay. Assembled in the U.S. yeah.

Those parts come from somewhere.

Right, right. And then they're making that. The. What is it? The, the incentive, the government incentive for having an EV based upon the fact if X percent of the car was made in the US versus not actually even the parts of that. Because again, a lot of stuff is assembled here with parts from elsewhere.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I would say that. I mean, I was just reading some stuff. I mean, a lot of these manufacturers have been kind of rerouting some of their goods since the. Since probably 2016ish, 2017. They've been kind of rerouting their trade routes, changing the way that the goods are manufactured so that they could be manufactured in different countries by the. And then basically sent here to avoid higher tariffs in one country versus the other. I mean, this happens a lot, but it takes, it takes a long time to re.

Re. Reroute your goods and to renegotiate contracts and routes and things like that, just to get stuff into the country. It's. It's kind of crazy, but it takes a long time to do that stuff. It doesn't change overnight.

Yeah, I had seen that in the threat of terrorists. I think it might have been David's bridal, you know, just all of a sudden shipped everything that was sitting there in China, you know, like 300,000 dresses or something crazy.

Whatever was available.

Yeah, just put it on the boats, get it over here before that happens. And then Apple is negotiating to build more of their stuff in because they already have manufacturing there. So it's not starting from zero, it's just ramping it up. But again, you know, you look at the components, we, we, we give no thought to this. With your iPhone or your Android phone or whatever, you know, you just pick it up and you use it. You know, you, you, you give no thought until it doesn't work. Right. That's when.

That's the only time we think about it.

It's true. Right, right. Whatever.

We, we don't care how it works as long as it works. It's when it doesn't work, that's the only time we care. Right. So you think about it. Yes, you can ramp up the manufacturing, but you need your supply chain. You need to get the chips, you need to get the glass, you need to get all this stuff. It isn't sitting on a shelf somewhere, you know, especially the, the special glass that's on these phones and all this stuff and those special chips not just sitting there. So we're all interconnected.

So as much as, you know, it'd be great if you could just get your stuff locally. What is it going to cost? Right? What is it going to cost? And what your customers. Are your customers willing to pay more? And it's funny, when I talk to people, you as a business are saying, hey, yeah, you know, I'll charge more because I'm using all us, made us, sourced us all this stuff. But when that same person is a customer, are you then looking for, hey, I want a better deal, I want something that's cheaper. And this started was it, wasn't it? Back in the Reagan administration? I think a lot of stuff started going offshore.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, America wanted cheaper goods. And so how do you do that? Okay, well, we have to manufacture somewhere else. We can't do it here. I mean, in some of the jobs, I mean, honestly, some of these jobs, I don't think American workers would actually do some of these jobs. So if you move them in other countries where you can get cheaper labor, they allow and cheaper, you know, materials and things like that, then all of a sudden you can produce this product, ship it to here, and then you can pay a lot less. Right.

Than making it here. And even if you were trying to make it here, the material cost, the labor costs would be much, much more. So you'd still have to pay more if you could get the people to actually do the work.

Right. And that's something that again, was created years ago when we're pushing everybody to go to college instead of go to trade school. Right. When apprenticeships, you know, all but went away and they're coming back again, which is great. Yeah. Because, you know, not everybody is going to be a knowledge worker. Right. Not everybody wants to do that.

My son, my younger son, graphic designer, and just got tired of sitting in front of a computer screen. Right. So he works with his hands now. He does custom fabrication at this company. Like if you wanted a custom wine cellar or Guy Fier opened the restaurant, they made the tables. The governor's mansion in Pennsylvania unfortunately had a firebombing at Passover. And there, it's a historic building and his company is recreating the moldings to match and stuff like that. But he's working with his hands.

He's actually hand carving rosettes, you know, but. But he didn't go to college for that.

It's funny you say that. My, my, my niece's son, who just graduated high school, he started, he went into the military. He wanted to go into the military. Well, he started off doing, you know, behind the computer, where intelligence work. And he just said he couldn't stand being behind the computer all the time. So he ended up changing his role into being a medic. He wanted to be a medic so he could get his hands into doing stuff and kind of being involved in combat and a bunch of other stuff. I know it was crazy, but he just said, I couldn't stand behind the computer.

It just couldn't, couldn't do it all day. So, yeah, it's happening.

Yeah. I mean, I'd be the same way. I'm a social being, you know, and I, I'll, I'll stay on Zoom all day because I'm still being social. Right. But I learned, what I learned about myself is sitting by myself and writing a report is like, just painful for me. And I could. And it's the same information. I would give you one on one, but now I have to sit and write that.

And, and, and that's what I know about myself. So I do website reviews. I do them on Zoom, and people say, hey, could, you know, review my website? So, sure, let's get on Zoom. It's being recorded, There's a transcript. You're getting all of that. But if I have to sit there and write a report, it's like I want to grow hair to pull it out, you know? I mean, it's just.

It's just. I'm with you.

Yeah, Right.

I like to listen. Like, when I learn, I listen and learn.

Right.

That's just how I do it.

Yeah. I do audiobooks and what is it? Audible said I listened to over 70 books last year. I don't think I finished them all, man. That's.

That's great.

But I'm doing two or three at a time. Like, I was just driving now, and I'm listening to a book, an AI book. And then when I'm working out, I was. I just finished Maya Angelou's I I Know why the Cage Bird Sings. Right. Famous book. I had never read it. So I.

I did.

I do it. Right.

Right. And that's it. I'm all over the place. It was one on Muhammad Ali that I did recently. It's just, I. Just keeping yourself. Keeping my brain active different ways. But it's funny because I write real books, like physical books and Kindles and audio books, but I understand.

Everybody learns differently, so. And that's what. The podcast, you know, we keep these short because people love that. They can hear the whole thing. So. So getting back to the content here, what do you see as far as impact of the wedding industry with the tariff supply chain, stuff like that? Is there anything like you want people to focus on? Anything you think that they should be watching out for?

I mean, I know if there's. Unfortunately, I don't know if there's really anything to watch out for, except just be aware of what? That the diet. That the market is changing and it's dynamic. Right. It could change tomorrow, change next week. So just be aware. Probably should start thinking about your contracts and building in. I mean, it's like.

It's like Covid all over again. Right. So people didn't have this stuff about COVID or maybe these things in their contracts, and now all of a sudden, you've got this new thing you've got to deal with. Maybe just start thinking about how do we implement cost changes like this into our contracts if it impacts you, especially for the. Probably the entire market. And anything that. Dealing with products that would. That you Know would be high impact scenarios.

You're going to have to deal with that. So that's, that's, those are probably the big things I would look out for right now.

Yeah.

I'll also probably just say, you know, figure out and some people are in probably direct contract with specific suppliers. So. But you might want to think about how do I, how do I deal with my supply chain in general and start looking at where can I diversify a little bit more? You know, how can I maybe route things differently or which suppliers could I get? I mean, you're going to have to start thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah. That whole force majeure and all those things we never paid attention to in the contracts. So I'm wondering, and again, you need to talk to a lawyer about this. You know, if you were going to put in a, a clause in your contract that we can raise your rate if this goes up. Like you said, a direct product, like a dress. Okay. You bought a dress that's coming from someplace. Right.

This is not just about China because the tariff can change anywhere. Right.

That's 10% across the board for everybod right now.

Right. So I wonder, my question to an attorney would be, okay, can we say, okay, that on the day that you, you bought, the tariff was 10% and if the tariff, you know, on the day it comes in is different, can I change your price? Right. That would be a thing. It was funny during. Not funny, but, you know, during COVID somebody called me a caterer and you know, their food costs had gone up dramatically. And, and they said, could you help us word a message to our customers that we're going to raise their price because of it? And I said, okay, first thing is, does your contract allow that?

Yeah.

And if your contract allows it, then we can talk about that. Right? Not that I agree with it, but I'll help you with that. And they, they came back and said, no, the contract doesn't allow that. I said, okay, there's nothing to talk about. Right?

Because. Nothing to talk about.

Yeah, but, but I asked the question. I said, have you ever had your price of supplies, in this case, food and stuff go down because food, food costs change all the time, right? And they said, yes. I said, have you ever lowered somebody's price because your food cost went down? And they said, no, no, of course not. Right, right. I said, so you're trying to have your cake and eat it too here, no pun intended for a caterer, but you try to have your cake and eat it too. I said, so you got price yourself so that you're going to have some of that. If you're bringing goods in, if you're a florist and you're getting your Oasis or you're getting your vases or you're getting your ribbons or whatever from, you know, from outside the country, you're going to have place price fluctuations. Flowers.

If you're sourcing your flowers, certain flowers certainly certain times a year, right. They're not in season. What are you doing? You're getting it from South America, you're getting them from someplace else. So you're always have fluctuations there and you should always price for that. And then again, you were talking about the indirect cost. If I need a new camera, a new lens or whatever that's coming from somewhere. If I need a new DJ controller or speakers, are they being manufactured outside the country? Right. Everybody's got something somewhere.

If you just look around, right. I'm looking at, we're looking at computer screens and, and microphones and cameras and printers and, you know, where is it coming from? We don't pay a lot of attention to a lot of those small things, but they add up. You know, it's just like fuel costs that affects everything. Delivery costs.

The airline station delivery. Yeah. I mean, jewelry for a second. The cost of gold has gone up and down, right. But it keeps rising and it's very fluctuate. It could fluctuate a couple hundred dollars in a day. So if you're a jewelry manufacturer and you're trying to figure out how much am I going to charge for this ring based on gold prices, it's almost impossible. You're going to have.

It's got a fixed period of time. You got to buy some amount of gold and you're going to have to go, okay, cool. That's our price at this point in time and that's what we're gonna have to charge. And you have to factor that in like, like the flowers situation. Right. So the problem with right now is that we don't know how it's going to change from day to day. We, you know, if it was just a fixed rate and we said, okay, 10 across the board and we said that was it. And everyone's we, you could build that into your business and absorb the 10 or raise it on later and pass it on.

But right now you don't know. One, one week it's X, the next week it's X. And you can't. It's hard for a business to plan. So it's difficult time Yeah.

I think what's different if I think about a florist and you're getting flowers, you have historical data to say, okay, over the last 10 years, 15, 20 years or whatever. Covid, not Covid. All this stuff, recessions, you know, you name it, we've gone through all this kind of stuff. You, you have that fluctuation. I think what this did, because it was so quick, so drastic is it took that and then added another layer on, in the case of, you know, the China one that went up to 145% or 160% or whatever it was. You can't predict that. Right. You can predict that there's going to be a drought and a La Nina or whatever and it's going to affect your flower prices.

But the flowers are only one element of a cost of goods. Right. Because it's not right. It's, it's different when you have the fixed good product or the finished product, like that camera body or like that speaker or whatever, the components that went into that. And like we said, you know, it might have left the dock and you know what you're paying for it. So you thought, right, because this is not from your manufacturer, that that's what's different about it. So.

Yeah.

Final thoughts, Any final thoughts for, for people listening and, and then, and then you're going to tell us about the wedding report and how they can find out more about it.

I, I, I would just say look at your supply chain. Figure out ways that you can be diversified a little bit and stop. You know, I, I know, I know a lot of people are in contracts, especially dress companies, have con specific contracts. Figure out how to diversify, figure out how to probably look at your contracts if there's anything you can do there. And then just, you know, try and be as strategic as you can about the situation and make some negotiations, Diversify your supply chain a little bit. I mean, it's really, I don't know, it's hard. It's very difficult. I, I've talked to multiple manufacturers and, and they're just in the, in the jewelry space and they, it's difficult because the fluctuation of everything, it's just, it's hard.

Just stay strong and try, try to keep climbing forward.

Well, you know, again, what's interesting is they're used to the price of gold going up and down, up and down, up and down. They're used to that. This is a layer on top of that.

Top of that.

Yeah, yeah. Because remember when with the fuel prices, some of the airlines had locked in prices. They're, you know, it's a commodity. They're going, doing the futures and they're buying the futures when they buy it.

In fixed amount for fixed rate. Yeah.

Right. Until that those futures, you know, are used up. And then it's other ones. This is that just all of a sudden, you know, it's just that uncertainty on top of that. So. Okay, so the wedding report. Tell people how they can find out more about it.

Wedding report. There you go. That's it.

Okay. It doesn't get much easier. Look in the show notes. You'll see some information about Shane, about the wedding report. Follow it, subscribe, get those, you know, annually. You want to look at as many sources as you can to get ideas. You know, your average sale came very, very, very close to what one of the other major reports had come up with. You know, if you look at two numbers and they're, they're looking pretty close, you can trust that.

Okay, this is, this is what, what's happening over there. So thank you so much for, for joining me. Thanks for putting that email out. I, that's why I get your emails, because I'm always looking at this going, oh, wow. And this was different. I was like, we need to talk about this.

Thanks for having me on, Alan. Appreciate it.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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