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You may want to get your holiday shopping done early this year as ripple effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have created a backlog at U.S. ports.
Ships have been waiting to be offloaded at ports all over the country as the global supply chain struggles to catch up from pandemic interruptions.
Professor Khawaja Mamun, of Sacred Heart University, says the rippling delays will affect your holiday shopping this year.
“We have a very delicate supply chain, so if one of them goes bad then the whole thing starts kind of a domino effect,” he says. “People are earning more, they’re getting higher wages, so they’re demanding more. So, our appetite for goods and services have gone up.”
Marc Rosenblum, the owner of Hobbytown Fairfield, says you’re going to need to start your holiday shopping pretty early this year to get everything you need, especially big-ticket items from well-known brands.
“Those kind of things that are very trendy are in short supply, and what has hit our shores…that’s it for the holiday season,” he says.
Rosenblum says keeping stocked with brands like Hasbro and Mattel on the shelves has already started becoming a challenge.
“We’ve had to order earlier, deeper, faster, to try to maintain our inventory level and not have empty shelves,” he says.
Rosenblum says he doesn’t expect the supply chain woes to end with the holidays.
“I think this is going to continue on into 2022 for some time, and I don’t know exactly when it’ll abate,” he says.
The National Retail Federation projects a record-breaking 25.9 million containers will be unloaded in U.S. ports this year.
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