Allow me to introduce myself; I’m Jim Telleysh, the newly appointed Senior Vice President of Sales for Olliix/JLA Home. I’d like to thank you for your continued support of the Olliix/JLA Home brand. We value your partnership and plan to grow our relationship through great product coupled with exceptional service.
Please note that we have experienced increases in material and labor costs compounding over the last years. We have worked diligently to reduce costs and create efficiencies in our factories in an effort to offset the rising costs, but we can no longer sustain pressures to our margins. Therefore it has become necessary for a price increase on a number of items within our line. Effective October 11, 2018 we will increase prices on average from 5-9%.
In an effort to maintain the same strong price points that you have become accustomed to with the Olliix line, we do have some very exciting news! We will be reducing the LTL freight rates by 5% on only LTL shipments. We have worked with our carriers negotiating better rates coming out of our bi-coastal distribution centers; California and Georgia. In addition, we have invested in two major (1,000,000+ square feet) Savannah, Georgia distribution centers. We anticipate faster turnaround times and major efficiency gains as we optimize these facilities in 2019. This is a major transition that should benefit our customers significantly. We will undoubtedly experience some growing pains during this transition. We appreciate your patience and partnership as we take this important next step forward with our company’s growth.
The LTL freight reduction will be effective October 11, 2018. To take advantage of these guaranteed lower freight rates please note that orders must meet our minimum order requirement of $2000.00. Orders less than $2000 will be subject to higher LTL freight rates.
As you know, our current US administration has imposed tariffs on imported goods from China. Furniture is included on the most recent list with a 10% tariff going into effect September 24th. We will hold off addressing the impact of this tariff with any additional price increases at this time and follow developments closely over the next several months. A jump up to a 25% tariff is currently scheduled for January 1, 2019. If this proceeds as scheduled, we will be forced to increase prices in the range of 10% to 20% on China furniture imports beginning in January 2019.
Thank you again for your business. We look forward to see you at the upcoming High Point Furniture Market.
