Bazooka Candy Brands has overhauled the way it works with suppliers after tariff-driven cost increases and softer demand for sweets made in China and other parts of Asia forced the company to reassess a long-standing sourcing model.
Erika Nava, Bazooka’s vice-president of strategic supply and product development, said the company had previously relied on a simple exchange: higher volumes in return for lower prices from contract manufacturers. That approach made sense in a mar...
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ket where suppliers in Asia accounted for about 80% of the company’s US sales, but it became harder to sustain once tariffs pushed up costs and demand weakened.
Speaking at an Institute for Supply Management World 2026 event in April, Nava said Bazooka decided to treat the problem as a shared one rather than a confrontation. In practice, that meant negotiating with vendors to absorb the shock together, rather than forcing the full burden on either side. For some suppliers, a straight split of the tariff costs worked. In other cases, where margins were already too thin, Bazooka accepted a larger share of the increase.
At times, the discussions went further. Bazooka asked suppliers to open up their cost structures, and in some cases was given access, which Nava said later gave the company more leverage in negotiations. The result was that Bazooka also stepped back from certain stock-keeping units that no longer made economic sense for either party.
The company has since tried to turn those crisis talks into a more durable partnership model. Nava said Bazooka intends to refund suppliers for part of the tariff burden they carried under levies imposed by President Donald Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which the US Supreme Court later ruled illegal. She told Supply Chain Dive she did not want the relationship to end with a temporary truce, saying she could not simply walk away after the crisis had passed.
Bazooka, founded in 1938 as Topps Chewing Gum and now owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, has built its business around brightly packaged, playful confectionery brands including Ring Pop, Push Pop, Baby Bottle Pop, Juicy Drop and Bazooka Bubble Gum. That consumer-facing creativity has long been central to the company’s identity, but Nava’s comments suggest the same emphasis on innovation is now being applied behind the scenes in procurement and supplier management.
Her four lessons from the tariff episode were straightforward. First, she said companies need to understand suppliers in depth: how they make decisions, what they can do, and where they may be useful in future. Second, performance needs to be monitored continuously, with annual targets and regular business reviews for key vendors. Third, value-stream mapping should be used routinely to uncover waste and identify savings. Finally, suppliers should be recognised when they go beyond expectations.
For Nava, the broader lesson is that crisis response can reshape commercial relationships. What began as a scramble to cope with tariff shocks has, she said, become a reason to build something more collaborative and more resilient.
Source: Noah Wire Services
