AURORA, Colo. — Last year, tariff-fueled price increases for sweets made in China and other Asian countries, plus weaker demand for those products, drove Bazooka Candy Brands to rethink its supplier strategy.
Gone was the playbook of trading higher volume for lower prices from contract manufacturers in a region that accounts for 80% of Bazooka’s U.S. sales, according to Erika Nava, VP of strategic...
The narrative frames the tariff crisis as a catalyst that forced a necessary, collaborative evolution in supply chain relationships. The core pattern involves a systemic shift away from purely transactional, competitive models toward relational, cooperative partnerships, driven by external pressures (tariffs). The central tension lies in the transition from adversarial negotiation ("price-versus-volume") to shared risk management ("sharing the pain"). This shift is not merely tactical cost manag...