Once or twice a year, there comes a time when we must ask our clients for a price adjustment.
No matter how many times we do it, it never becomes easier. If anything, the weight of it seems to grow each year.
Our long-time clients tend to quietly accept the request without pushing the burden back on us. When someone says, “Understood, the usual please,” we are truly grateful, and we bow our heads inside.
Because of that kindness, we do not want to raise prices casually. We try to hold out as long as possible, and only when we truly cannot hold any longer, we bring the request to the table.
That said, we have recently come to feel that holding out too long is not quite right either.
Craftsmen in the production region, dyers, finishers—everyone is facing the same wave of rising costs. If we suppress our prices too much, that wave is passed on to them.
This is work that flows through many hands. To avoid putting unfair pressure on any one of them, we cannot keep running from the moment when we have to ask. We are slowly learning to accept that responsibility.
Lowering our heads, while thinking of the entire production region. Today, once again, we are searching for the right words to carry that message.