Founders often feel guilty about raising prices. Reframe this: sustainable profit margins are what allow your business to survive and continue serving customers. Without profitability, the business fails and everyone loses. It's a matter of ensuring longevity, not greed.

Brands should be transparent about price increases due to external factors like tariffs. Unlike airlines that permanently added fees, businesses that remove surcharges when costs decrease build long-term trust and avoid commoditization.

Norwegian Wool avoids inflating prices just to offer discounts later. By maintaining price integrity, they build trust with customers who know they're paying the "real price." This prevents buyer's remorse and reinforces the brand's premium, high-value positioning.

During major internal changes (e.g., tech refactoring, price hikes), users can feel neglected. Bending Spoons found that monthly video updates for Evernote were crucial for reassuring the community, demonstrating progress, and putting a human face on the company to directly address concerns.

A blanket price increase is a mistake. Instead, segment your customers. For those deriving high value, use the increase as a trigger for an upsell conversation to a better product. For price-sensitive customers, consider deferring the hike while you work to better demonstrate your value.

In a shift towards predictive CX, brands are proactively saving customers money, even if it hurts immediate revenue. This radical transparency builds immense long-term trust and loyalty.

Elf's CEO believes it's immoral to charge consumers inflated prices for beauty products when high-quality, affordable alternatives are possible. This reframes the "dupe" strategy from a competitive tactic to a consumer-centric mission, especially for budget-conscious demographics.

The strategy of setting an artificially high price to negotiate down is dangerous in an era of high transparency. When customers inevitably discover they paid more than peers, it destroys trust and reputation. Maintain a consistent price, offering flexibility only through standardized commercial levers.

Elf maintains low prices by embedding its own quality control and lean manufacturing teams within partner supplier facilities. This hybrid model gives them a high degree of control over cost and speed, allowing them to sell products like a $3 lipstick profitably, even amidst inflation and tariffs.