08/24/2026
A US SHIPPING UPDATE
It's been about 48 hours since the latest developments in this seemingly never-ending trade war, and I've finally had enough time to cool off and put together a more composed update about where Dobbies Hobbies currently stands. Heck we didn't even post a Dopamine Dimanche yesterday, I was fresh out of dopamine.....
For the moment, shipping to the United States remains temporarily suspended.
There isn't much point in sugar-coating how we feel about the situation. We are incredibly disappointed and, frankly, furious about these tariffs and the impact they are having on Canadian businesses.
For a company the size of Dobbies Hobbies, a tariff isn't an abstract percentage being argued about by politicians. It directly affects our prices, our customers, our sales, and our ability to keep operating.
So where do we go from here?
We're working on it.
Our intention is to resume shipping to our American customers, but we need to do it in a way that doesn't force our Canadian and international customers to shoulder costs that have nothing to do with them.
Unfortunately, the tools available to us aren't making that particularly easy.
Neither eBay nor Wix currently gives us a practical way to increase the price of an item specifically for customers in the United States. The most workable solution we've found is to incorporate the tariff into the shipping cost for US orders.
We're currently working through exactly how to implement that.
Rather than reopening our entire catalogue at once, we'll likely begin with a limited selection of products — primarily our naval ranges — and expand from there once we're confident everything is working properly.
We know the resulting shipping prices are going to look ridiculous.
We think they're ridiculous too.
But those charges aren't additional profit for Dobbies Hobbies. They're the unfortunate cost of getting our products across the border under the current tariff situation.
And that's the difficult reality we're trying to navigate.
Dobbies Hobbies isn't just a hobby for us. It's our livelihood.
We're a small family business. There isn't a corporate office, a board of directors, or a giant financial cushion sitting behind us. There's a workshop, a lot of printers, an unreasonable number of tiny ships, and a family relying on this business to keep moving forward.
This past year has already brought plenty of challenges for our young family, and this certainly wasn't one we needed added to the pile. Nevertheless, we'll adapt, figure it out, and keep going.
Most importantly, we want to say thank you.
Thank you to our Canadian customers who continue to support a small Canadian business.
Thank you to our international customers who have stuck with us through seemingly endless changes to shipping and customs.
And thank you to our American customers. We know you didn't ask for any of this either, and the messages of support and understanding we've received from south of the border have meant a great deal to us.
Your support is the reason we're still here.
We're hoping to have at least part of our catalogue available to US customers again soon, and we'll post another update as soon as we have everything figured out.
Until then, we'll continue doing what apparently now constitutes a significant portion of running a miniature company: Drinking tea, reading tariff schedules, swearing at spreadsheets, and occasionally remembering we're supposed to be making tiny tanks and ships.
Signing off from the increasingly overworked
Dobbies Hobbies Department of International Trade, Tariff Interpretation & Advanced Financial Witchcraft
Andrew Dobson
Dobbies Hobbies
