It's Time To Say Goodbye

This is definitely one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but it’s time to say goodbye to Rooted Nutrition. Our last day will be June 30th.

I’ve laughed, cried, mourned, and celebrated with so many over the years. I’ve met some of the most amazing, incredible people. I’ve watched people get married and seen so many babies born. I got to experience people going from being very sick to reaching incredible milestones. I am so fortunate to have met all of you!

I have told a few people, and they always ask why. I feel as though it’s really important to tell the true reason why, in detail, because most people don’t know how many small businesses are being destroyed for the same reason and just how hard it has made life for them. This story is being played out every day across the country.

The reason is the insanity with customs and tariffs. As a business that imports the majority of its products, since April of 2025, when he who shall not be named announced the idiotic tariff situation and fired a bunch of people at various government agencies involved with dealing with the messes he created, it has been a living hell for us (and hundreds of thousands of other small businesses). We even absorbed 90-95% of the tariffs over the past year because I felt bad and didn’t want to pass the costs along. Contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court striking down the tariffs didn’t make them go away; it just changed which regulation they're collected under. They are still very much in effect. 

It’s not just paying tariffs, that’s just part of it that most people are aware of. There is a whole mess of things behind the scenes that go along with it that make every day absolutely miserable. Instead of helping people (which is why I got into this), I have spent my days dealing with endless paperwork, frustration, hours on hold on the phone (yelling at the stupid AI phone tree thing), conflicting requirements and rules, and an ever-changing process that clearly had no plan in place when it was implemented. As the months went on, I was spending more time dealing with the customs and tariffs situation than I was on anything else. Spending every day extremely frustrated, waking up each day with a feeling of dread about what might come that day, dealing with utter chaos and more paperwork than you can imagine, was not something I ever wanted to do, and was leading to significant burnout. If I kept it up, I’m guessing a big heart attack would be in my near future. Getting metaphorically punched in the stomach every day really sucks.

Normally, if you were going to set up a huge new government program, such as, let’s say, a big tariffs and customs plan, you would set up the system and get everything in place to handle it before you put the plan out. However, that is not at all what happened. For example, for about six weeks last year, you couldn’t have any packages shipped to the US from Australia via the postal service, which is where a lot of our imports came from, because they didn’t put a system in place to collect tariffs and told countries just to figure it out.

You also would have rules and regulations set up that would not change via tweet randomly at any hour of the day. Businesses need stability to function properly. Constant change makes it impossible to plan for the future. You might order inventory thinking you are going to pay a 10% or 20% tariff, 30 or 60 days in advance, but then, when it ships, the tariff might suddenly be 30% or 50%, and you lose money on that entire shipment. That’s clearly not a winning formula for a business.

Then there were the misclassification problems. Most supplements were supposed to have tariffs of 10 to 15%, depending on where they were coming from. You fill out all the paperwork and do all the things, and then, when the shipment is midway to the US or has arrived at customs, they often classify it incorrectly despite all the information and codes provided to them. A shipment that was supposed to have a 10% tariff would be classified as steel or aluminum for some unknown reason and hit with a 50% tariff instead of the 10% or 15%. 

Clearly, this is a steel or aluminum product.

Then you have to choose to pay it or appeal. Well, to appeal, there are all kinds of costs, and you have to pay daily storage fees at the bonded warehouse. By the time the appeal went through, a shipment had racked up a massive amount of fees, causing you to lose money on it, and often, you would lose the appeal for reasons you were never told or that made no sense. Now you are out the high, incorrect tariff cost, plus all the fees to try to appeal it and the storage costs. Not only that, but shipments arrived very late, which led to many out-of-stock situations. 

We mostly dealt with small, family-owned companies, so these were not high-margin products that we could keep absorbing costs on.

Not only was there all that complete insanity, but this year they began randomly destroying countless shipments, even if you had all the right paperwork and information filled out and put on the boxes, etc. These were things that we had been importing for years without issue. That cost was massive. I don’t even want to tell you all how much money we lost this year from this. Whenever you got hold of anyone about this conflicting information was given, depending on who you talked to. Often, they would say you need this or that permit, and go to the website to get it. Then you would go to the website, and it would say, " You don’t need that, you need this instead. So you get that, and then they still destroy your shipments. This is what happens when you randomly fire huge numbers of people in the government, and institutional knowledge is lost. Our good friends at Seleno Health lost nearly 250,000 dollars when customs opened and damaged thousands of packages of cacao, claiming they suspected drugs in the boxes. This shipment was passing through a US port, not even destined for distribution in the US. The scale of destruction and an out-of-control customs department with no restraints is causing good people and small businesses is staggering, and most people never hear about it.  Insurance will not cover losses due to customs, so there was no way to get any of the money back.

Now they are working on removing customs cargo processing from NYC airports, where most of our inventory comes in, because they are in “sanctuary cities.” This will cause massive delays and problems with product imports, which would add on a whole other nightmare for me.

Because of these things, many companies are choosing not to ship to the US.

The cherry on top of all of this was that the war in Iran dramatically increased the costs of shipping things to the US and shipping packages throughout the US. 

All this created an untenable situation. Waking up every day with a feeling of dread about what was going to happen with all of this and going to bed emotionally exhausted from dealing with it all is no way to live. I tried everything I could; I really did, but this massive mess is far too much for small businesses to deal with.

In this last month, we could use your support more than ever. We have a lot of closing costs and things to pay off because of the debts we accumulated over the last fourteen months due to all of this. If you could make a purchase or buy a few months' worth and stock up, it would help us out so much! We will be putting many items on sale so that you can save money as well.

Your support over the years means the world to me. You chose a small business and ethically produced products that help make life better for countless people around the world, and I will always be grateful for that. Your purchases helped dig water wells in poor communities, funded schooling, helped family farmers transition to regenerative agriculture and keep their farms in the family, planted trees, helped people get out of the drug trade, preserved rainforest land, and so much more. 

As we face the tough times and uncertainty ahead, remember to be kind and take care of each other. Empathy, compassion, and kindness will be more important than ever in the months and years ahead. Take care of each other, do little things to make life better for someone else, and add some joy to the world. You mustn’t let them beat you down, don’t let them make you lose your humanity, or make you feel apathetic. That’s what they want. We have to keep caring and fighting for what’s right. I know I will!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you!