When Your Business and Your Values Collide
In this week’s podcast, three owners talk about the uncomfortable moments when customers, employees, and events tempt them to speak up.
Good morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
The new tariff regime has created even more uncertainty and some surprising winners and losers.
Generation Z has been slow to adjust to the workplace. So what can we do?
Kickstarter is becoming a more mainstream source of financing.
In Philadelphia, from corner stores to tech startups, 30 percent of the small businesses are owned by immigrants.
THE 21 HATS PODCAST
When Your Business and Your Values Collide: For the past six years, we’ve done our best to avoid talking politics on this podcast. By focusing on the business realities owners confront every day, we’ve tried to create a space where people with very different perspectives—from different industries and different parts of the country—can still learn from one another. That’s something we take seriously. But we also live in the real world. And lately, the real world has been making that separation harder.
On this episode, Paul Downs, Kate Morgan, and Liz Picarazzi talk about those moments when business and personal beliefs collide—and when staying silent may not feel like an option. They’ve each faced uncomfortable questions: What do you do when an employee says something you find objectionable? Are there customers you simply won’t work with? How do you stay true to your values without putting your company at risk?
There are no easy answers here. And not everyone will agree on where the line should be drawn. But as always, there’s real value in seeing how other owners handle tricky situations.
You can subscribe to the 21 Hats Podcast wherever you get podcasts.
THE TRADE WARS
The Supreme Court decision has released a whole new round of uncertainty: “Since the Supreme Court invalidated many of Mr. Trump’s tariffslast month, his administration has vowed to use other legal authorities to rebuild the program. Almost immediately, Mr. Trump wielded an unproven legal provision to enact a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on U.S. trading partners and threatened to raise the rate. The haphazard rollout has introduced a tangle of unknowns for companies. A new tariff system could upend months of business decisions, and many companies are bracing for prolonged uncertainty. They are also considering whether and how to seek refunds on tariffs they paid — and, if they receive them, whether they would return any money to customers.”
“Peter Furth, whose company, FFF Associates in Stamford, Conn., imports fig paste from Turkey and Spain, said Mr. Trump’s tariffs had driven up costs and destroyed his cash flow. Mr. Furth has been passing on the additional costs to his customers, which include Mondelez, the maker of Fig Newtons; Nature’s Bakery; and J&J Snack Foods. He said he believed he had a contractual, and moral, obligation to return any tariff refund to customers. ‘I owe it back to them,’ he said. ‘It’s very simple.’”
“Jeremy DeFilippis, chief executive of Jetty, a clothing company in Manahawkin, N.J., said any refund would be a financial boon. Jetty buys board shorts, shirts and other apparel from suppliers in China, India, Vietnam and Guatemala, and Mr. DeFilippis estimated that the company paid $250,000 to $300,000 in additional tariffs last year.”
“To help alleviate the extra tariff burden on imports from China, Jetty had moved some production to Vietnam last April, which Mr. DeFilippis said had resulted in lower quality and delayed shipments. It decided not to raise prices for retail customers, taking a hit to its profit margin.”
“If he received a tariff refund, he said, he would use the money to shore up his company’s finances. ‘It would really help in the short term with operating expenses and labor,’ he said. ‘It’s not like we’re going to give out vouchers to customers.’” READ MORE
