The most adorable part of the influencer economy is being squeezed by tariffs

Business Insider

22-04-2025

Rachel Reichenbach is stressed out about tariffs.
The artist and content creator sells frog pins, plush toys, and other amphibian-themed items to fans.
Her plushies are made in China, which means they could soon become much more expensive to sell in the US due to recent tariffs and rule changes instituted by the Trump administration. If she raises the cost of her green and blue plush frogs to cover tariff fees, they may become too pricey for her audience.
"No matter how cute they are, people are only going to be willing to pay a certain amount for things," said Reichenbach, who has around 117,000 Instagram followers and 670 Patreon subscribers. "My products, they're not a staple. It's going to be the first to be cut from most people's budget."
The US-China trade war is hitting the influencer economy unevenly. Influencers sell a variety of items to make money off their fame, whether that's sweatpants, keychains, or chocolate bars. Some products, like T-shirts or food, can be easily manufactured in the US, which could shield them from tariffs. Plushies, however, tend to be made in China, where tariffs on toy imports are now set at 145%.
The increase hasn't hit for some creators yet, but they're bracing for higher costs.
Plushies can sell for anywhere from $15 to upward of $30, several creators and suppliers told Business Insider. Creators are worried they could piss off fans if added fees force them to raise prices. The market for influencer plushies, popular among anime illustrators, YouTube channels with animated characters, and VTubers, could crash in the coming months if creators back away from selling stuffed toys in favor of lower-tariffed items.
"For some creators, plushies are far and away the bestseller," said Walker Williams, cofounder at the creator e-commerce platform Fourthwall. "They're really collectible, they're fun, they're unique, and so for a good number of creators, plushies are 90% plus of their sales."
Warren James CEO Saurabh Shah told BI that plushy sales are a "close second" to apparel for the creator merch company, which works with creators like Hasan Piker and Tana Mongeau.
Why finding plushies outside China is challenging
Influencers and their business partners lean heavily on China for plushies because of the country's manufacturing efficiencies, executives at creator merch companies told BI.
China became a plushies hub because its factories are colocated and can easily work together, said Ronak Trivedi, CEO of the product manufacturing platform Pietra. He said cities like Dongguan and Yiwu have "extremely robust economies around plushy production."
There are other places for plush toy manufacturing outside China, including Vietnam. Companies make plushies in the US and Australia, for example, but they can be expensive due to labor costs. Factories outside China or Vietnam are also less equipped to work with influencers on small batch orders, and creators tend to release products in limited drops.
"If you don't want to produce 20,000 of them, basically you have to go to China or Vietnam," Williams said.
Being price conscious is a must for influencers who want to avoid pissing off fans
Some creators are worried about setting high prices on plushies because they think it will come off as greedy to their fans.
"When things are crazy in the world, I think creators are a little more reluctant to go and sell something directly to their fans," Williams said. "They don't want to put their audience under pressure to buy things."
Warren James is raising prices — to the tune of less than 10% across most categories — meaning a $35 plushie would now be about $38, Shah said. The company and creators are also eating some of the costs, as are its suppliers and shipping partners.
"We're being surgical about it," he said of the increases. "For us, merch is about fan connection — it should still feel accessible."
Other merch companies like anime creator product company Noir are anticipating much steeper price increases tied to tariffs that could more than double the cost of plushies for their customers.
Noir isn't shying away from letting customers know why prices are going up. The company plans to list price increases for plushies as a Trump tariff fee in the checkout cart.
Other creators have been shouting out potential price hikes in posts on platforms like Instagram and X.
"Transparency is really important for the fans to feel like they know why we're doing what we're doing," Cary Huang from the YouTube channel Jack n Jellify told BI.
Influencers and their partners are racing to find workarounds
The plushy price apocalypse hasn't fully hit. Some creators are still benefiting from the de minimis loophole that exempts from tariffs smaller orders shipped from China. But the administration is stripping that exemption away beginning on May 2.
Still, influencers and their suppliers aren't sitting idle. Some are rushing to get as many shipments into the US as possible before the exemption is removed. Others are considering sourcing their plushies from Vietnam if Chinese suppliers become unviable.
​​Shah said Warren James began exploring factories there across all categories after the Biden administration signaled tariff increases last year, and it's now doing test production runs. It is modeling plans to bring about half of its business in China to Vietnam.
Other merch companies are thinking on their feet.
Killer Merch COO Mark Bubb said more partnerships could help more players in the relatively nascent space succeed. One example could include various entities coming together "to give a decent amount of business to a small manufacturer that would help them scale."
Other creators may eventually move away from plushies if they become too expensive to produce.
"I do think that creators are going to go for products that are more made in the USA," Williams said. "A lot of creators are going to say, 'Hey, I'm not looking to pay 2.5 times the price on a plushie.'"
Oliver Gilpin, CEO of Telos Media, which runs animated YouTube channels like Solarballs and MrSpherical, said the company may prioritize playing cards over plushies because it has a smaller price markup on its plush toys.
"With tariffs starting, it really hits low markup businesses and products," Gilpin said.
Of course, abandoning plushies isn't an option for everyone.
"The type of product really matters," Jack n Jellify's Huang said. "You can't just swap out a plushy for a jigsaw puzzle."