VAT? Value added to our artisans!

Because of COVID-19, many (small) businesses in Germany have been struggling. To support the economy, the German parliament voted to temporarily reduce its tax rate by 3% until the end of 2020. This means that instead of 19%, we now pay 16% taxes on each product that we sell. Because of the reduced tax rate, some brands are lowering their prices. At CANO, we have chosen to keep our prices the same. Because we want to be fully transparent with you, we will explain exactly why.

Initially, we thought about reducing our prices, so that you, our customer, would benefit from the tax reduction. However, manually changing the prices of our products would be a huge hassle, as we would have to change the price of each product manually - now and then again in six months. Instead, we thought about using the money to make a positive difference.

We have thought long and hard about what to do with this money and we've decided that the best thing to do is to invest it in a way that would have a real impact.

As a brand that is committed to helping our workers, we see this VAT reduction an opportunity to have a bigger positive social impact. So instead of using the 3% to increase our profit, we have decided to use the money to support the people who could really use our help after the set-backs of the corona crisis: our artisans.

Our community manager Alejandra is speaking with our artisans in the workshops in Mexico this week. We want to get their feedback on what we can do to improve their living quality and find out what they would benefit from the most. Based on this information, we will use the money to invest in workplace improvements for the huarache workshop.

We are very excited about this new project, and are curious to hear what you think 💛

Are you interested in reading updates on this project in future blog posts? Let us know in the comments!