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El efecto de los aranceles para la empresa gmt.

Cens0r · 2025-04-17T21:04:58+00:00

GMT.games es una empresa estadounidense de juegos de mesa que lleva en activo más de 30 años. Es una de las editoriales de juegos de guerra más importantes del mundo. La realidad es que la empresa es una nave industrial con unas decenas de trabajadores que se dedican a publicar juegos de guerra de nicho. Es famosísima dentro del mundillo porque fueron los que editaron una de los mejores juegos de mesa de la Historia: Twiligt Struggle, que estuvo número 1 durante 6 años en la web de referencia de juegos de mesa a nivel mundial que es BGG. Y actualmente andará entre los 10 mejores. Yo estoy suscrito a su boletín informativo desde hace unos 10 años. Hoy me llega su boletín al correo electrónico y veo que en la cabecera no se habla de juegos sino de los problemas que los aranceles impuestos por Donald Trump les han causado. Copio y pego el asunto de los aranceles y lo que les supone. Hi everyone! First off, I want to note that due to the length of this first section of the newsletter this time (my apologies for the length, but I want to be as transparent as possible with you, so that you understand what we are facing), we are eliminating or abbreviating several of our usual sections. They will be back next month! As most of you know, it's been a wild and challenging month of April already in terms of tariffs and trade wars that have a direct impact on GMT and our operations, and we're barely halfway through the month. Before I get to all that, though, I want to personally thank all of you who took part in our 40% off sale from April 1-7. I know that you got some products you wanted at great prices. I also know that many of you bought items in the sale because you really wanted to help us through what has been a very difficult time here at GMT. I just want you to know that all of us at GMT appreciate your kindness and concern and willingness to help us. You DID help us improve our cash reserves, which makes us more flexible and resilient as we face the new challenges in the form of heightened tariffs. The Elephant in the Room - Tariffs. So let's just get into the tariff conversation. First off, I'm not at all interested in talking about the politics of all this, especially in public. The tariffs create a huge functional cash flow and pricing problem for us, as they do much of the board game industry. Today I'm going to be as transparent as possible as I explain the issues we face, what we intend to do to move forward, and how you can help us. First of all, we hear this question a lot... "Why Not Just Start Printing in the US?" How we wish we could! Unfortunately, we don't have the option to just "move your printing back to the US" because the quality and precision of manufacturing needed to produce many of the components in our games just does not exist at the scale and pace that we need in the United States. Believe me, we've searched for them and continue to do so (see Kai's more detailed note in her Production section later in the update). Price is, of course, an issue—as the bids we've received from the US-based companies we've asked to bid on projects were 3-4 times what it currently costs to print our games. But the key thing, sadly, is that even at hugely increased costs, the few US companies that can do SOME of the work that we need can't produce anywhere near the quality that we (and you) are used to with mass sophisticated game production in China. We printed in the US for many years before moving offshore due mostly to quality issues (we were tired of and frustrated with those "bad old days" of paying for 10,000 countersheets and having to throw away 25% of them because they were miscut—often with no refunds or credits). For the few of those companies that still exist today, their machinery is older now and their capability to produce high quality game components has not kept pace with what the game market now expects. And they are very limited in how many projects they can run concurrently; they are certainly not in a position to print 25+ games a year for us, which is what we need financially to make GMT work. Ironically, although we're "too big" for such older companies, there are a couple of pretty high end European companies that have facilities here in the US, but we're "too small" for them (with minimum print runs required of 20-25,000 copies). That leaves us with virtually no viable options to print in the US at high quality and the scale that serves GMT and all of our customers. We have been exploring, and will continue to explore, alternative arrangements for printing outside of China, but we have not yet found any that are satisfactory. See Kai's production section below if you'd like more details on our "search." We're in this together. As you'll see from the financial details I'm sharing below, these tariffs and their meteoric rise over just a couple of weeks, have presented a set of huge, potentially fatal problems for us at GMT. What I want you to know is that we are doing everything we can to plan a viable route through the tariff minefields. And I want to tell you that we absolutely cannot do it without all of you, our customers, sticking with us. One of the effects of these tariffs and the dialogue around them is that a lot of people who live outside of the US are angry at the US government right now, some even boycotting US products. I just want to remind you that, although we understand the frustration and anger, this doesn't miccionan you have to be angry with GMT. We believe that we've done right by our customers over these 35 years, providing quality products and customer service and treating you all with kindness and respect. We've hosted hundreds of you at our various GMT events here in the US over the years, numerous GMT team members have attended your conventions in your countries, and many of us have become friends. But this environment of heightened tensions, frustrations, and anger created by the tariff/trade issues is a challenge to all of us. Will we retain our good relationships and friendships and mutual support amidst the chaos? That's a question that each of us individually has to answer, but what I can do today is tell you how we at GMT are approaching this. Honestly, our response to this challenge is pretty simple. We will stay true to ourselves and will treat ALL of our customers, employees, and strategic partners—in any country—as friends who are worthy of kindness and respect. Despite what's happening on a national level, that doesn't have to—and will not—change who we are. What's being modeled for all of us at higher levels right now is "Care about yourself. Get your advantage. Don't worry about others. Demonize your opponents." Of course, the "us vs them" vitriol that this kind of approach has ignited between parties and countries is NOT the way we believe in treating people or how we do business here at GMT. Over 35 years, that kind of exclusive, divisive, selfish thinking has just never been part of our company DNA. I hope, for all of our sakes, that these tariff conditions and trade issues don't last for long. But even if they do, it's not going to shake our commitment to treating our customers as friends and trying our best to create "win-win" scenarios for all of us. You matter to us. And frankly, as we've told you many times over the past 35 years, we can't do what we do without you. This is collectively OUR hobby, not any one company's or any one country's. It's something that many of us are passionate about and that we all enjoy TOGETHER around our game tables and online. So here at GMT, we're going to do everything we possibly can to continue to be transparent with our customers and to show leadership, kindness, and respect to each other and to all of you even through these rough times. We intend to make sure—to the best of our human efforts and abilities—that we can all continue to enjoy this hobby—and the games that we create and produce here at GMT—together for many, many years. I would respectfully and imploringly ask you all to join us in these commitments to each other as we consider how to keep GMT creating great games for you even in the face of the biggest threat to our continued existence as a company in the past 35 years. As you'll see in what trincows, we absolutely need your support in order to survive this and to someday thrive together again. Now Let's Look at The Big Financial and Operational Issues Created by the Tariffs. Issue #1. Cash Flow. This isn't the one you hear about as much as you do "game prices" when you hear game companies talk about the tariff impacts, but it's definitely the one most likely to kill us. Because of the 145% tariff, those batches of games that we have currently printing in China (and any subsequent batches) are going to cost us EXORBITANTLY more cash than we planned for when we were told that tariffs would be 10% (we had a plan for that, and even for 20-40%). For example, we currently have 14 games at the printer. The cost to print all of those titles is right around $500,000. It looks right now like they'll be coming in three separate shipments, but that's still in normal times a $500,000 cash commitment from us to pay for all the games. And FYI, P500 charges are designed to provide us with the funds to pay the printers, while other sales to distributors and longer-term direct sales to customers pay for our overhead and create some profits. So right now, as long as a lot of customers don't cancel orders before we charge and ship for those games, we can expect about 500K in P500 income that would in normal times pay for those games. With the 145% tariff, though, those games will now cost over 1.2 MILLION dollars to get to our warehouse. That's $700,000+ extra for.....basically nothing. So how we price the games (the next issue) isn't the biggest problem we have at all. Rather, it's how to pay for the games at the scale and frequency that we print them with a 145% tariff (in this case, $700K) tagged on. As a business model, with that level of tariffs, printing at a pace we need to in order to cover our overhead, it's unsustainable. Basically that group of three shipments alone, unless we make some big operational changes quickly, will eat up all of our cash reserves and leave us with no funds to pay our employees and other expenses.