Medicine Hat's Weddingstar to close Sept. 25, cutting 85 jobs
The wedding-favours maker, founded in 1983, says it can no longer absorb the costs of cross-border tariffs and lost trade exemptions.
Why it matters
The closure highlights how tariff changes and shifting trade rules are directly costing jobs at long-running Alberta businesses.
Weddingstar, a Medicine Hat company that has made wedding and party favours since 1983, will close its operations on Sept. 25 after 43 years in business, laying off about 85 employees. Owner Rick Brink said the company plans to wind down by liquidating its inventory and equipment.
Brink said tariffs and rising cross-border trade costs made continuing untenable, particularly since roughly 75 per cent of Weddingstar's sales go to the United States while most of its products are manufactured in China. He said the removal of the U.S. de minimis exemption added paperwork, handling fees and delays to nearly every order, which hit hard given the company's smaller order sizes and margins.
Brink said the uncertainty made it impossible to plan or invest, unlike during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company pivoted to selling facemasks to survive. He and his wife Helle decided to control the timing of the closure rather than risk being forced to shut down suddenly.
The company tried shifting focus to Canadian and European markets, but Brink said Canada's market couldn't replace U.S. sales, and a new $5-per-line-item EU import charge announced in mid-June forced Weddingstar to shut down its European website on July 1.
Compiled by the Alberta Daily Desk — an AI-written summary of reporting from the credited sources below, produced and reviewed under our editorial policy.