If you’ve ever been to an anime or any fan convention, you know that the place that’s often the busiest is artists alley. There, creators sell their wares ranging from commissioned artwork to stickers, enamel pins, stuffed toys, apparel, food, and more. Often these goods are made with the artist’s own hand. Other times, merchants are resellers, importing goods that are hard to find domestically, like gunpla kits, from markets where they’re more abundant. But with the Trump tariffs in effect, artists alleys might soon become ghost towns.
The Verge spoke to several fandom and gaming-adjacent small businesses about what they’re doing to prepare for the tariffs which threaten to destroy businesses of all sizes throughout the US.
An artist who simply goes by Biggles has been doing art commissions for the last eight years.
“I love drawing Vtubers and I love the community so much that my husband and I ended up opening our own merch store, VTHorizons,” Biggles said in an interview on Discord. The store is stocked with merchandise of several Vtubers including Biggles herself who streams in the persona of a funny-looking cat on Twitch. “We do acrylics, glassware, metal bottles, stickers, slate rock coasters, and are planning on adding more items.”
Biggles sources most of the raw materials for her products from China and according to her, the business is thriving. “This is my dream,” she said. “Creating things is why I wake up every day. The tariffs felt like [they were] crashing something I worked so hard for.”
A lot of businesses, particularly in the gaming and art communities, source their products from China. In the trade war initiated by President Trump, China now faces a whopping 104 percent tariff. Businesses about to see their costs skyrocket.
“We’ve already had to shift money from investing in new equipment to stocking up ahead of time these past few months,” said Jasen, a maker of embroidered goods based in Wisconsin. “But if we were to keep our prices the same, eventually our profit margins would reduce to an unsustainable level since we barely count the labor cost of our time spent making the product, marketing it, and selling it at events as it is.”
Even though the Trump administration has instituted sweeping tariffs on nearly every other country in the world, none of the businesses I spoke to know what that translates to in actual costs. That uncertainty compounds their anxiety as they have no idea if they’ll be able to reasonably eat costs or if they’ll have to raise prices and by how much.
Most businesses don’t want to raise prices at all. Their products are already aggressively priced in line with their competitors, and others simply don’t want to place any more burden on their customers who themselves will feel the pain of rising costs in every other aspect of their lives.
“If prices were to go up across the whole economy no one would have the extra money to spend on our business,” Jasen, the embroiderer, said.
Businesses I spoke to said that they were either stocking up on supplies as they work out longer term plans, or are working to find suppliers from countries not getting double-whacked by tariffs like China. Part of President Trump’s stated goal for these tariffs is to encourage businesses to buy and produce American, and some of the businesses I spoke to would love nothing more. But more often than not, that avenue is simply unfeasible, if not outright impossible.
“I’ve always tried to have my products manufactured in the US,” said Vreni Stollberger, an illustrator and comics artist who runs a merchandise store for her work. “But there’s a lot of items that you can only get from China. Washi tape, key chains, plush toys, custom apparel, they’re almost impossible to find here and when you do find them, they’re far too expensive to be a viable option.”
Dustin Holden, whose company MakeMHz modifies and updates older video game consoles, is in a similar situation.
“Even if we redesigned our products to accommodate alternative microcontrollers, power supplies, or analog components,” he said over DM chat. “No domestic equivalents are available.”
Those who can circumvent the tariffs by bringing production in house are doing so at steep cost and on accelerated timelines. Biggles said it’s costing her tens of thousands of dollars to bring in equipment that’ll let her make her acrylic products at home, a cost she’s not sure she can bear.
For Tim Zheng, CEO of Vite Ramen, an instant noodle company, it doesn’t matter that his business does everything the Trump administration claims it’s trying to achieve, the tariffs still threaten to put him out of business.
“We make things here,” he wrote in an impassioned email to his customers. “We provide good jobs. We source as much as possible from American suppliers. And yet, we’re still staring down stacks and stacks of price increases across the board.”
For these business owners, figuring out how they will survive the tariffs is not just a financial imperative. It is emotionally taxing.
“We have to figure out more ways to get creative while still being creative,” the artist Biggles said. “Right now I’m steaming three days a week for three hours, then all the other days of the week I’m working on merch art, working on private commissions, and now planning shows.”
For all the business owners I spoke to, the tariffs are more than just a financial and logistical blow, but an existential one as well. The plans they’ve made to expand their businesses are now put on hold, and peoples’ livelihoods have been imperiled for arbitrary reasons beyond their control.
“I’m scared,” Biggles said. “I’m scared for the [tariffs’] impact and how this will uproot lives.” But there is hope, not in the government reversing its decision but in the communities these businesses have cultivated.
“I keep at it because as corny as it sounds, nothing in the world is better than drawing a picture that makes someone go ‘hell yeah,’” Stollberger said. “That’s really all I want to do in my life and these goddamn swaggerless [jerks] keep getting in my way!”