Anyone notice N-Depot has gotten very expensive?

You get what you pay for. Ask yourself why some people might be cheaper than we are. I do not raise prices lightly, nor do I do it to make more money. If we raise prices, that's because our cost for pure raw material has gone up significantly enough to drastically affect our ability to operate on those margins. Often times our costs have gone up 2-3 times before I make the ultimate decision to raise prices. In fact, sometimes that's to our detriment. We were losing money on some products because we had kept prices the same for years, but our costs had almost doubled. This is because I had systems in place that would trigger a reassessment if our costs jumped by more than 10%. However, we did not have systems in place that would catch gradual 2-3% increases happening every few months over years. So by the time we realized what was going on, we had already been selling at a loss for a while. Obviously that is not sustainable, and we have fixed our processes for assessing cost increases to account for things like that. However, sometimes we have to raise prices to continue to operate. We have been paying 25% tariffs now on a lot of things, which are going to be going to 30% soon. Many people don't realize it is US companies paying the tariffs in this stupid trade war. They think it is Chinese companies, but that's not the case. It's us. WE pay them; and if our costs go up 30% that means retail prices have to go up as well. It sucks, and I wish we were not in a trade war right now, but I can't control that. I can only control our costs. Some things got hit with a 25% tariff even though we ordered them before the tariffs were implemented. So we can't even plan for costs sometimes. 25-30% is a lot! Imagine if you ordered a pizza for $20, but they asked for $25 when they showed up to your house to deliver it. However, you can't say no, because the pizza delivery guy is the US government. So you have to pay it because they make the rules and throw you in jail if you refuse to play their game. That's what we are dealing with right now.

Also know that we often pay more for certain things because we can ensure the quality will be high. I could save us money by going with other suppliers on certain products, but I know the quality won't be there. So we don't. If I just wanted to play the price game, I would order from the cheapest supplier possible every time. We don't do that because we hold ourselves to a higher standard. It's frustrating for me because we then have people say they are going elsewhere because the found it cheaper, not knowing there is a reason for that. I try to be the best price on things if it is possible, but sometimes it is not possible to do at the quality and level we are doing it.