- Sonos has a plan to fight tariffs: raise prices
- It announced this in its recent Q3 earnings presentation
- The price hike will go into effect “later this year”
If you have your eye on a Sonos speaker and live in the US, you might want to act sooner rather than later – as price hikes are incoming.
This doesn’t seem to be a complete repeat of the company’s 2021 hikes which saw Sonos tech go up in price for seemingly no reason. Instead, the multi-room audio giant says these higher costs come as a direct result of the tariffs which are making it more expensive to import from the countries in which Sonos runs its manufacturing operations.
The news comes via Sonos’ latest quarterly earnings presentation. The Q3 PDF includes a page dedicated to an “Overview of Sonos Tariff Exposure” where it explains that it shifted most of its manufacturing from China to either Vietnam and Malaysia – with only certain accessories such as speaker stands and some of its Sonance co-branded speakers still being made in China.
While that means most of Sonos’ products will dodge the 30% tariff imposed on Chinese-made goods, models made in Vietnam and Malaysia will still face 20% and 19% tariffs (based on rates as of the time of writing on August 7).
Alongside these pricing adjustment plans Sonos adds that it does have some “manufacturing flexibility,” however it only describes moving production between its Vietnam and Malaysian operations, rather than shifting production to the US to dodge import taxes.
So unless tariff plans change – either through Trump backing down, a trade deal with these nations, or some other governmental action – Sonos’ tech will be going up in price. As will, we expect, the cost of Sonos- and Sonance-branded accessories.
Precisely how much of a cost increase the actual speakers will see is yet to be announced, and we don’t yet know exactly when the price hike will come either – with the company perhaps waiting to see if the situation changes before making its final decision.
Sonos also says it is currently evaluating what, if any, changes it should make to its promotional strategies – perhaps suggesting the discounts we’ll see in upcoming sales (like Black Friday) might be tweaked too, in that they could be less significant than we currently hope.
For now we’re speculating on what Sonos’ precise actions will be; all we know for certain is that some kind of price increase is coming to the US “later this year”, so if you’ve been waiting to buy some of the best Sonos soundbars and speakers, you might want to stop waiting.
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
