Citing raw material cost increases, Zazzle.com announced a price increase in the forums today:
As of midnight last night, we increased the price of all Rickshaw products to keep in step with the dramatic rise in the cost of raw materials used to manufacture these cut and sew products. As everyone is aware, we do not do this often, but we are committed to this new and rapidly-expanding product line and felt the increase wouldn’t jeopardize their sales
The new base price of the bags is $85.95, so expect to see many of them priced over $100! So many of us Zazzlers fell in love with these bags and have been planning to buy our own, so this will hit us, too. It was particularly surprising as the bags have only been available since mid-January! I only remember one or two other Zazzle price increases in nearly four years of Zazzling, so this is a rare event as Eric mentioned in the forums.
Although cotton prices doubled in 2010 after natural disasters badly affected crops in Asia and Australia, prices fellback steeply since March of 2011 as production increased and demand fell per Commodity Online.
While cotton producers may shift into higher paying crops in 2012-13, thereby decreasing the global cotton production, the timing of this particular price increase was a little surprising.
Presumably then, it’s some other raw material. I hope so, because all the new products announced last night are made of cotton!