Art's Way anticipates implementing a 3%-5% price hike for customers.
The company said, "We have experienced decreased demand for the last six fiscal quarters due to difficult agricultural market conditions highlighted by high interest rates, increasing input costs and low row crop prices. Although our inventory decreased from heightened levels in fiscal 2024, many dealers are still sitting on inventory from other equipment manufacturers, which hampers our ability to get these dealers to stock more of our equipment. We believe product availability will be key for the next two fiscal quarters to capitalize on retail opportunities and yearend tax buying. Strategically, we are continuing to build inventory through our fiscal year end despite low demand in order to be responsive to farmers needs this fall. Livestock prices, predominately cattle, continue to be at all-time highs in fiscal 2025 and have driven strong grinder mixer sales activity thus far in fiscal 2025. We expect cattle farmers to have strong earnings in 2025, and we could potentially see retail opportunities in an attempt to offset tax liability prior to the calendar year-end. The agriculture market is highly cyclical, and we believe this is the bottom of the cycle. We anticipate that conditions will start to improve in the next 9 to 15 months in our market. Our efforts in fiscal 2024 to right-size our production and administrative staff have reduced our operating expenses which is aiding in our efforts to weather the bottom of the cycle. Our fall early order program starts in October and runs through January 15th. The sales decreases for the three- and nine- months periods ended August 31, 2025 compared to the same periods in fiscal 2024, resulted in less variable margin to cover our fixed costs comparatively while inflationary forces also negatively affected our gross margin. Steel prices began to rise in February 2025 due to tariff uncertainty and infrastructure projects that impacted domestic demand. While steel prices have dropped from their peak in April 2025, we have not seen them return to 2024 levels. We are also paying higher prices from tariff charges for imported products, which is negatively affecting our margin. We are exploring reshoring options for these items in an attempt to reduce the gross margin impact. We expect to pass on a 3-5% price increase to our customers with our fall early order program due to rising costs from our suppliers."
