The pressure is on I've watched three different businesses in the last month grapple with the same question. Their suppliers are signalling price increases. Some have already landed. Energy costs are volatile. Currency moves overnight. And tariff policy keeps shifting depending on who's talking to whom. The instinct is always the same: raise prices before you get squeezed. Get ahead of it. Protect the margin. But that instinct will hurt you if you don't think it through properly. Why raising prices now is risky We're in a period where your customer is also stressed. Petrol prices jumped at their sharpest rate on record in March. People are cancelling subscriptions because they can't afford them anymore. That £500 trap story you've probably read about? That's not just about bad design. That's about people being stretched thin and furious when they discover they're paying for something they forgot about. Your customer's wallet is tighter than it was six months ago. Now, if you raise prices across the board "just in case" tariffs hit you, you're betting that your customers will absorb that cost without switching. Some will. Many won't. I've seen businesses lose 15 to 20 percent of their customer base in the first quarter after a blanket price increase, and the margin gain doesn't make up for the revenue drop. The other problem is credibility. Once you raise prices, you've told your customers something about where you sit in the supply chain. If tariffs don't materialise as expected, or if they hit your competitors harder than you, you look like you were just taking the opportunity to pad margins. That's a trust problem, and trust is harder to rebuild than a price cut. What you should actually do instead First, know your own numbers. Not estimates. Real numbers. What percentage of your cost base is actually exposed to tariff risk? For some businesses it's 40 percent. For others it's 3 percent. I worked with a London-based product company last year who thought they were heavily exposed to tariff increases, and it turned out their biggest cost drivers were labour and rent. The tariff risk was real but marginal. Do a proper cost breakdown. Use something like a Decision Matrix if you're weighing multiple supplier or sourcing options. You need to see which costs are actually vulnerable and which aren't. Second, talk to your suppliers now. Not your customers. Your suppliers. Find out what's actually happening on their end. Are they being hit? When? How much? Are they planning to pass costs on, or are they absorbing some? Some suppliers will negotiate with you if you ask directly. Others are still working it out themselves. But you need real information, not speculation. Third, segment your pricing. Don't raise prices on everything. Raise them only on the products or services where you've actually got cost exposure. If you've got a product line that's mostly domestic supply chain, leave it alone. If another line is heavily dependent on imported materials, that's where you might need to move. Your customers will feel that as more fair, even if it still stings. When to actually raise prices Raise prices when you can show the work. Not before. When you know a supplier has confirmed a price increase and it's coming through in sixty days, that's when you tell your customers. "We're raising prices on X because our cost for Y has increased by Z percent." Transparency works. People don't like surprises, but they understand cost increases if you explain them. Raise prices selectively. If you can absorb the hit on 30 percent of your revenue and pass it on for the other 70 percent, do that. It keeps more customers, and it looks like you're not just opportunistic. Raise prices with a narrative. "We're investing in faster delivery" or "We've upgraded the quality of materials" or "We've brought this in-house to give you better control." Even if it's just a cost pass-through, frame it as something the customer gets back. Oil prices jumped, yes. But the RAC noted that happened. Your customer knows. You don't need to pretend it's about anything else. And raise prices with an offer. A slight discount for annual commitments. A loyalty credit for long-standing customers. Something that says you value the relationship and aren't just extracting more money because you can. What you're actually measuring Don't measure success by the margin increase. Measure it by customer retention. If you raise prices by 8 percent and lose 12 percent of your customers, you've failed. You've got less revenue and the customers you kept are probably resentful. Measure it by how long it takes to replace lost customers at the new price point. How many months of margin gain does it take to offset the acquisition cost of the people who left? Measure it by how your actual suppliers move. If you raise prices and your suppliers then don't pass on increases to you, you've left money on the table. If they do pass them on and you've already raised prices, you're protected. That's the only time it works. What to do this week Pull your last three months of supplier invoices. Calculate what percentage of your total costs come from imports or tariff-exposed materials. Write that number down. That's your real exposure. Email your three biggest suppliers. Ask them directly: "Are you expecting to increase prices in the next six months? If so, when and by how much?" You'll get vague answers. Push back. You need specifics. If you're thinking about raising prices, draft a customer communication explaining exactly why and when. Show it to two customers you trust before you send it to everyone. See how they react. Their feedback will tell you whether you're being fair or just greedy.