Here is How to Survive Them
Straight to the point: Your costs are going to go up. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the trajectory is clear — tariffs are coming, supply chains are twitchy, and your inbox is going to fill up with cost increases.
So here’s the truth: You can’t fight them all. And you shouldn’t.
Not Every Cost Increase Is a Shakedown
We’ve all seen it — the vendor who cries wolf. But not every increase is opportunistic. Some are legit. We know tariffs are real and you won’t win arguing against every one of them. You might win a few short-term battles, but you will exhaust your team and miss the strategic ones that matter.
Let’s be honest — if your team tells you they’re diving deep into every cost increase, they’re lying or they’re drowning.
The volume is just too high. The changes are too fast. And the details are too overwhelming. You need a process that gets you to the truth faster.
That’s why we developed the Conlego Approach to Managing Cost Increases. This five-point process helps our clients identify and address cost increases, cut through the unnecessary details, and focus on the ones that truly matter. But that’s triage – and not a long-term strategy.
There is a better way
The only long-term solution? A robust category management process with negotiation built into the fabric.
When your vendors know that every category transition is structured, baseline-driven, and no-nonsense, opportunistic increases don’t even get proposed.
You don’t have to be the cost cop on every change. You just have to build the system that makes it clear: “We’ll see you at the next category review. Come correct.”
Prioritize. Process. Move On.
Sometimes, you just need to process the increase and keep moving. That’s not weakness — that’s strategic discipline.
We saw it during COVID. We saw it with the last wave of tariffs. And we’re seeing it again now. The winners aren’t the ones who fought every increase. The winners are the ones who prioritized, negotiated with intent, and built a system that vendors respect.
The Bottom Line
You’re not going to dodge every cost increase. But with the correct process, you won’t have to. You’ll be focused on the ones that matter — and ignore the ones that don’t. For the long haul, if you know you can rely on your category management negotiations to hold it all together, you’ll be able to sleep easily.
