Despite their dominance in the news, tariffs are not new. Companies have seen them rise and fall across the globe in the past, always adjusting costs and margins in response. What is new, however, is today’s unprecedented rate of dynamic tariff movement—and the colossal tumult it is causing.
That means you need a dynamic pricing strategy to adapt to the uncertainty.
“When things are moving so fast and you don’t have a good, certain understanding of what’s happening, you need to be a little bit more responsive and agile,” said Ravi Rangan, chief technology officer of Centric Software, in the webinar Tariff Turbulence: Leveraging Technology and Pricing Elasticity to Thrive in 2025. “It’s a little bit like being caught in a fire in the theater. You don’t start analyzing what to do; you [just] run for the exit. But you want to be prepared.”
Market intelligence tools like Centric Market Intelligence are key to creating a macroeconomic context—providing information on external forces of the market, what’s happening, what’s trending, what are the competitive forces, not just in your category, but across the industry.
First step, noted Jade Huang, VP, strategy & market intelligence, Centric Software, is to set a pricing baseline. This entails examining and reaffirming your specific brand’s price positioning and strategy in relation to your competitors, as well as noting how competitive companies build out their respective pricing and assortment architecture, and what changes they might have made over time. How they managed significant disruptive events is especially pertinent.
Tracking the basic white T-shirt as an example across a variety of brands, Huang looked at pricing and assortment breadth to spotlight significant clusters and overall philosophy. She found, for example, that ASOS’ average price for a white T-shirt was $32.37, among 355 skus of shirts and tops. Gap, in contrast, focuses 52 percent of its white T-shirt assortment in the entry price point of $21 to $25, but with only 23 shirts and top skus (tighter, but still higher than Uniqlo’s highly rationalized nine). Meanwhile, H&M, with 71 shirts and top skus, focuses on mass appeal, with 44 percent of its white T-shirts priced between $6 to $10, with entry price point as little as under $5.
To understand the shift in prices and strategy over time, Huang then looked at price positioning from Q1 2020 to Q1 2025. This revealed that ASOS had diversified and spread out its risk by expanding white T-shirt price points across $16 to $35 today, instead of the strong $16 to $20 range focus from 2020, thus diversifying from a 41 percent single price point concentration.
Major department stores, which source from thousands of small to large brands, also serve as important gauges of larger market shifts. Centric Market Intelligence revealed that in the last month, Macy’s raised its average MSRP ticket for white T-shirts “a whopping $11” from $42 to $53.”
Fast-fashion Chinese retailer Shein, which no longer has the under $800 duty-free de minimis loophole on its side, raised its average white T-shirt price from $20 to $29 in just one week in April 2025 (a $9 increase)—a dramatic hike for a brand that has built its reputation on super low prices.
Digging deeper, Centric’s intelligence interpreted that evergreen items have longer-lasting appeal than fleeting trends, thus justifying the high white tee price hike. With the power to monitor the market and competitors in real time, especially around disruptions like tariffs, “you can start to have some inferences on how [companies] are thinking about spreading out that cost and passing it to customers,” said Huang.
Looking inward
In addition to focusing on external forces and outside competitive analysis, Centric also has tools for companies to look inward and analyze their own operations, something especially important for omnichannel retailers cross-channel in uncertain times.
“In addition to the probing and deep sensing from the outside, there’s also the other parts of, how do I organize my product? How do I do the bill of material? How do I pick materials? How do I pick from multiple sources or from my supply chain, or shift supply chains? And how do I track to product development metrics and supply sustainability targets?” said Rangan.
Any pricing strategy must also take the consumer into account, from their level of tolerance and their direct feedback. As consumers are managing their disposable income and budgets, smart companies should proactively and transparently communicate price hikes via direct email, website postings and/or social media. Centric’s Digital Shelf Analysis (DSA) provides consumer feedback and review insights, which can also factor into the equation.
With future and even current tariff levies constantly in flux, Centric tools allow companies to run various “what if?” scenarios to be ready when disruption occurs.
“I can basically do simulations of different [sourcing and manufacturing] strategies. And within the strategy, simulate different tariff scenarios,” said Rangan. “Especially if I’m expecting a tariff scenario that I need to be prepared for. So, if [a tariff] does enact in 90 days, then I can pull the trigger on [chosen scenario], and I have at least done my homework, and I can sleep at night.”
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