I hate to repeat a phrase we’ve heard at nauseum lately, but the last couple of years truly have been unprecedented.
We all thought 2020 was as bad as it was going to get, right? But 2021 stepped up and delivered a whole new set of challenges.
While the global pandemic rages on, a combination of other factors including “rising container and shipping costs, limited supplies of cargo ships to transport goods, rising ground transportation costs and other supply chain issues” have created new issues right ahead of the holiday shopping season.
These issues are creating huge backlogs of shipments coming to Canada from overseas manufacturing facilities and by the look of it, we could be staring at many empty shelves come late November & early December, when the majority of holiday sales typically are taking place.
Supply chain issues have been reported around the world with Toy companies currently facing shipping price increases from 500 – 800 percent and increase in transit times of 75 days or more. The result is the retail availability of certain items may be far below what we’ve seen in past years.
The Canadian Toy Association is advising Canadians to start their holiday shopping early to avoid disappointment come Christmas.
“Every year there are certain hot toys that sell-out quickly and are hard to find, and this year they may be even harder to find as they may sell out quickly and experience delays being replenished,” cautions Andrew Wagar, Canadian Toy Association. “Consumers have also become conditioned to wait for last minute holiday season sales, but these sales may not come, or will be harder to find, this year.”
In past years, we’ve encouraged our community to wait for The Thrifty Thirty to start their shopping, but given the current situation, procrastination is not advisable. Plan ahead, “shop early this year and take advantage of the inventory supply when it is strong and avoid the line-ups, shortages and prices that may lie ahead.”
