Pin Box Fall 2025 Update - Feat. USA Tariffs

Hey Everyone! We’re Back!

I appreciate everyone’s understanding during this time and a lot of changes have been made to Pin Box over the last couple of weeks.

If you're only interested in the headline changes / updates then please read the TL:DR below

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TL:DR

• No surprise fees on USA Pre-Orders: Pin Box will cover all new USA tariffs on pre-orders (Bracer Supply Box, Trails TCG, etc.) for orders placed before today. You won’t pay extra at delivery.
• Bracer Supply Box Release timing: The Bracer Supply Box is still on schedule for Fall 2025. We’ll confirm an exact date closer to September’s end. We have a full update on the Bracer Supply Box below in the main text.
• Royal Mail USA orders: Tariffs are now included at checkout. A clear tariff breakdown will be shown per shipping method.
• FedEx USA orders: Tariffs & duties are charged at delivery. FedEx also adds extra import fees, so we strongly recommend choosing Royal Mail.
• Impact: Covering tariffs takes a big cut from our margins and affects future projects. To help offset this, we’re be introducing optional support tiers later this month (from £5 up, with rewards like exclusive pins, T-shirts, development input, and even HQ tours). These are entirely optional - your pre-orders are safe regardless.
• EU Taxes: EU Taxes are now included on the list price for orders up to €150 as per IOSS rules. Any orders over €150 will have the taxes discounted from the product for you to pay at point of delivery
• Worldwide Pricing: Pricing for everywhere outside of the UK & EU is now reduced on average by 15%. Enjoy!
• Shipping Changes: We will unfortunately no longer be offering free shipping. After trailing it for a few months we’ve encountered too many issues to overlook, preventing us running certain types of promotions and complicating business opportunities. These savings have been moved to the product price and inclusion of taxes. Products like the Bracer Supply Box & Our Giclees will continue to offer free shipping.
• Warehouse Move: We have now finished Stage 1 of the warehouse move, and Stage 2 is now underway. Until we have finished the move in its entirety we expect there to be a slight delay getting new orders out by on average 1 business day.
• New Falcom Shop Merchandise Live: We have everything from Neckties to Plates so be sure to check out the latest offering being brought over direct from Nihon Falcom.
• XL Pin Restocks: Loewe, Renne and Kevin XL pins are finally back in stock with new packaging.
• Trails English TCG: We have managed to get our hands on additional stock for the upcoming Trails TCG, grab it while you can! We don’t expect to be able to get additional stock beyond this.

If you're interested in reading additional context and formation around the decisions and updates above then we encourage you to grab a cup of tea and sit down. This might take a while!

USA Tariffs

There has long been confusion over USA Tariffs, what are they, who pays them, why they are happening and pretty much everything around them. I won’t claim to know everything around them, but I do know what the result is and how that affects you along with the events that got us here.

So, while I’ll try to make this as short as possible this is a very complicated subject with a lot of nuance, and while everything I’ll state here will be accurate for orders placed with Pin Box – I cannot guarantee orders placed from other stores will work the same way, there’s just simply too much variability.

I must also stress that while this is accurate as of the time of writing (13th September 2025), the White House has a lovely trait to changing policy on a whim. After all, de-minimus was meant to end in 2027 as part of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” signed July 4^th 2025, yet less than 4 weeks later it was changed to the 29^th August 2025. If there are any substantial changes that affect the information in this post I will update it as soon as I am able.

In late July 2025, the U.S. government ended the long-standing “de minimis” rule that let low-value parcels (previously under $800) enter duty-free; from 29 August 2025 all parcels are now assessed for duties, which is why you are seeing charges where there were none before.

The change was made via a White House order suspending de minimis for all countries and is now being enforced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/suspending-duty-free-de-minimis-treatment-for-all-countries

In parallel, the administration introduced a reciprocal baseline tariff on imports (generally 10% unless a higher country- or product-specific rate applies), which stacks according to the item’s tariff classification. (We’ll come back to this later)

Critically, U.S. duties are based on country of origin (where the item was made or “substantially transformed”), not where it ships from - so an item manufactured in Country A but dispatched from Country B is still treated as originating in Country A for tariff purposes.

The other aspect that has caused chaos around the world is the mandate that any countries shipping items to the USA postal system has to pre-pay the tariffs. This means that if we want to ship anything to the USA with standard methods we have to pay those tariffs up front. USPS will literally just refuse the parcel otherwise.

There is no way around these tariffs and USA fulfilment wouldn’t eliminate them either as we would still have to pay the tariffs to get the items into the USA in the first place. In fact we would have to pay additional duties dependent on product types, so it would arguably be even more expensive to wholesale goods into the USA and that’s before fulfillment storage costs and logistics.

While I won’t go into the specifics of how it works orders placed with us shipped with Royal Mail will only be subject to the reciprocal tariff for the country that the item was made in. Below are the current rates as of writing:

UK: 10%
EU: 15%
Japan: 15%
China: 30%

Orders made with any other service will be subject to additional duties on specific product types ON TOP of the reciprocal tariffs and that’s before any payment processing fees. For this reason, we strongly recommend you stick with Royal Mail for shipments to the USA. If you need extra security for your order, we do offer a signed service with Royal Mail to the USA.

Every product page lists the country of origin, and you will receive a full breakdown of the tariffs at checkout when selecting your shipping option. After that you won’t have any additional charges.

Please bear in mind these tariffs you're paying to us are paid straight back to the USA government, we don’t make any money from them and if they are ever altered, we will update our systems to charge the correct amount.

If you don’t agree with these tariffs we would strongly encourage you to speak with your local representative. We all have a voice, however that voice is lost if it is not used.

To recap new orders being made to the USA going forward.

USA Orders Via Royal Mail

Royal Mail shipments to the USA now show an itemized tariff line at checkout. That line reflects the expected import duty/tariff for your cart and destination, so you pay it upfront and avoid surprises on the doorstep. In practical terms: you’ll see product price, shipping, taxes/tariffs (where applicable), then a single paid total - delivery with no extra collections. Royal Mail continues to be our recommended method for most USA customers because it avoids courier “advancement/processing” fees and keeps total landed cost predictable.

USA Orders Via FedEx

FedEx shipments are Delivered Duties Unpaid (DDU). That means tariffs, duties, and any FedEx brokerage/advancement fees are requested by FedEx at or before delivery to the receiver. The courier may also add disbursement/clearance charges on top of the government tariff. If you choose FedEx, expect a separate payment request and a higher total landed cost compared with Royal Mail. Choose FedEx only if you need speed and tracking granularity and you’re comfortable with the extra import charges levied by the courier.

USA Pre-Orders & Tariffs

Some of you might have noticed the issue that has come to pass as part of all that. If tariffs must be prepaid to ship items in the only sensible way there is now, then what about pre-orders for the Bracer Supply Box & Trails TCG?

Well, our only options were as follows:

1.      Pay the Tariffs ourselves consuming a large percentage of the profits from the entire product,

2.      Send everything via courier and land every customer with an expensive import charge,

3.      Or reach out to customers and require payment of tariffs before shipping.

We didn’t like any of those options for a variety of reasons but ultimately, we had to make a decision, and we concluded we wanted the Bracer Supply Box to be the best experience possible so we’ve gone with option 1 meaning it’ll get delivered as originally planned with no additional fees. However nothing is without compromise…

Tariffs’ Impact on Pin Box & Ways You Can Help

Absorbing the USA tariffs on these pre-orders has been a massive unforeseen expense that drastically reduces our margins on those products and when put on top of additional shipping costs due to delays and higher than expected production costs for certain elements of the box (More on that later) and a much overdue relocation to a bigger space leaves us in a situation that limits some of the future plans we had for Pin Box.

To try to balance this without touching existing pre-orders, we’ll be introducing optional support tiers with tangible rewards later this month (exclusive pins, T-shirt, sample packs, input on design choices, workshops, even an HQ tour). They’re strictly optional - pre-orders remain protected either way.

So, if you want to support us there will be plenty of opportunities on the way. Please note that our focus right now is on completing production and shipping of the Bracer Supply Box, so please expect physical rewards to be arranged after this period of time.

We'll have a dedicated page for these support tiers that we will share soon. If you want an idea of what we’ve got in mind moving forward at Pin Box you’ll find more information under the warehouse section below.

Bracer Supply Box Updates

It was my original intention to share more of the production of the Bracer Supply Box before now however it quickly became apparent that we just weren’t ready for the sheer volume of orders when it came to some of the products being produced in-house.

I’m happy to say regardless of the setbacks I’ve encountered the Bracer Supply Box is still on track for a Fall 2025 release. That’s something I am very committed to. Once we have completed production and are in the final stages of boxing up everything, I will share with everyone an exact shipping window.

The biggest roadblock that has been faced during the production has been the Acrylic Diorama. It was our initial plan to produce this in-house however it quickly became apparent that with the volume of orders even if we went in for 16 hours a day we wouldn’t be able to produce enough before the launch window.

So we started looking for somewhere to outsource the job to and long story short – the quality was not up to my standards which left us in a bit of a predicament. The only way we could ensure that production would be completed to our standards was to do it ourselves but we just didn’t have the equipment that could handle the volume. We could have continued to look for a manufacturing partner that would meet our quality requirements but we were at a point where if we hit another bust we would have to delay the box. That was not something I wanted to do so we invested in a Roland MO-240 in order to ensure we could manage the production ourselves and I’m happy to say production is well underway. This machine will also allow us to create a whole host of new products moving forward.

We also hit a rather lengthy delay with the production of the bags however we’ve opted to expedite the delivery via air to prevent any delays on the release of the box. While this was costly we wanted to ensure we delivered in the original time frame stated.

At this stage everything is either on it’s way to us or production is continuing in-house so we’re confident about hitting that at this stage. We expect to have a more detailed shipping time frame later this month.

Worldwide Pricing Update

We took the opportunity while the store was closed to update some of our back-end systems specifically in regards to how taxes are calculated for the UK & the EU. The system we were using was a very old hold over from when we first setup the store in the Pin.Limited days – WAYYY before tariffs and IOSS and having to become an e-citizen of Estonia but I digress. With the store being closed it was the perfect change to go back and get everything modernized. Prices in the UK now actually show they include taxes and prices in the EU include taxes instead of them being charged as a separate line item at checkout. If you are awesome enough to support us over €150 then the tax is removed from your items at checkout and will be due at point of delivery. Finally, we’ve reduced prices for customers outside the UK and EU by an average of ~15%. The goal is to align total landed cost more fairly now that we’ve reworked shipping and tax handling by region.

The End of Free Shipping

We’re retiring free shipping. Over the last few months offering it we’ve encountered a number of issues that just couldn’t be overcome. And while it’s something that makes sense on the surface in practicality it results in limiting us regarding the types of promotions, made some bundles unworkable, and complicated partner opportunities while also making pricing in general tricky.

As always we’ll only charge you what it costs us to ship the item, our intent is never to make money on the shipping. And if you ever think a shipping quote is incorrect you are always welcome to contact us for confirmation.

With taxes & shipping being charged as what they are it allows us to focus on making every item competitively priced and run the type of promotions we want to run.

Products exceptions like the Bracer Supply Box will continue to offer free shipping.

*We previously stated that Giclees would continue to offer free shipping, this information was incorrect - apologies for any inconvience caused.

Pin Box Warehouse Move

Stage 1 of the warehouse move is now complete with us shipping orders from the new location. Stage 2 is more about getting the rest of the new warehouse ready for all the production equipment to move across once the Bracer Supply Box has been completed and shipped out.

While we’re still in this limbo there could be delays in shipping some items out by an additional business day due to production happening in one space and shipping in another.

Rest assured pre-orders, and their production are being prioritized. We’ll announce once the move is fully complete and normal dispatch speeds resume.

The new warehouse will give us a lot more space to be able to create more exciting merchandise and expand our manufacturing capabilities with new machinery, some of which we are very excited about.

New Falcom Shop Merchandise Available

Due to popular demand we’re expanding our line up of Falcom Shop merchandise to a whole host of goodies, some of these are outside of the normal scope for us including Neckties, socks and even plates! We’ve kept numbers limited until we get a better idea of demand. If there’s something you think we should stock from the Falcom Shop that we haven’t already, please let us know!

XL Pin Restocks

Our classic XL pins of Loewe, Renne and Kevin from the Legend of Heroes series are finally back in stock. The print on these have been completely remastered come in our new standard for XL packaging!

Trails English TCG

We’ve secured additional allocation for the upcoming Trails English TCG. Availability is still constrained, and we don’t expect further restocks beyond this. If you intend to play or collect, order now; once this drop is gone, that’s likely it for this wave.

Thanks again for everyone's support while we've been working through these updates. You'll be hearing from us again very soon once we get the last items for the Bracer Supply Box in and have assessed when shipping will begin. Externally the only item that we are now waiting on are the Estelle Bags, beyond that we just need to wrap up our internal production and assemble the boxes and we'll get them out to everyone!