Bay Supply Blog - Rivets, Fasteners, and Tools

Bay Supply has launched its innovative new Baysupply.com B2B eCommerce platform as the first B2B vertical marketplace to serve the fastening industry.

E-commerce is no longer a new concept. Consumers have been buying goods online for years, and since the pandemic, online sales have been rising faster than in-store sales. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, total retail sales saw a 6.9 percent increase in Q4 2020, and e-commerce sales rose 32.1 percent in the same period. Today, e-commerce sales make up about 14 percent of overall retail sales. 

We at Bay Supply don’t need to tell our customers how complex state sales tax laws are. You probably already know the minefield that collecting the correct taxes from your clients and customers can be.

Trust us: We feel your pain. Recent court rulings and updated state laws have expanded the number of states from which Bay Supply must collect sales tax—even some we don’t have an actual physical presence in. This is challenging for us, because 50 states means 50 different ways we collect and submit sales taxes. 

Metal price hikes, primarily caused by tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, have resulted in major headaches for American companies. How prices will be affected in the future remains uncertain.

The tariffs the Trump Administration has imposed in 2018 have been met with plenty of criticism, along with a few approvals. Recent news from Ford has really brought the decisions—specifically, tariffs on steel and aluminum—into sharper focus.

Ford announced that, after attributing $1 billion in lost profits to President Trump’s tariffs, it will institute “massive layoffs”—up to 24,000 jobs, according to one report. The automaker’s woes are not unique to the industry—other manufacturing sectors have also struggled with the effects of the new duties imposed on goods from other nations, including Canada, China, Mexico, and the European Union.

A major economic story of 2018 has been the tariffs the White House has imposed on other nations and the resulting trade war from tariffs being imposed back on the United States. Initially, tariffs on steel and aluminum did not apply to materials produced in Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, but as the trade war has escalated, those markets’ imports now are subject to tariffs as well—25 percent on steel, 10 percent on aluminum.