Stores throughout CT cope with supply challenge
As holiday shopping season starts, some items hard to find
There was no magic about how Kim Ramsey had small mountains of toys and games stacked at her tiny store, heading into this year’s holiday shopping season amid hand-wringing over an ongoing supply chain crisis.
It was simply a lesson learned from the weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic, when she ordered a hotly anticipated new game called “Magic Mountain” — which just arrived two months ago.
Heading into the 2021 holiday shopping season, which started well before Halloween this year, Ramsey felt in pretty good shape as far as stocking the shelves of The Toy Room in Bethel with thousands of products.
But as for the inch-thick sheaf of invoices for toys and games on order that had yet to arrive, Ramsey wasn’t so sure she was going to get them. And she has no alternative to replace the inventory of 75 percent of the thousands of products she is carrying in the weeks beyond Black Friday.
Ramsey said the 2020 holiday season served notice on how this year might go in the toy industry, as some companies delayed releasing new products into last spring. It was a lesson learned after she put in her initial order for “Magic Mountain” in February 2020 and the game took 18
“I just had a gut feeling and heard rumblings — as early as February and March. I was really trying to beat the price increases, which I knew were inevitable.” Kim Ramsey, owner, The Toy Room
months to arrive.
“I just had a gut feeling and heard rumblings — as early as February and March,” Ramsey said of her decision to stock up The Toy Room months in advance of when she ordinarily would. “I was really trying to beat the price increases, which I knew were inevitable.”
Heading into Black Friday, some product shortages were seen in Connecticut stores the day before Thanksgiving.
Those perusing Target in Bethel for women’s socks as a stocking stuffer had only about half the normal selection to choose from. But there were plenty of Christmas stockings to hang on the mantle, and loads of children’s toys with the exception of a few products.
Shoppers had cleaned out much of the Hot Wheels supply down the street at Walmart and household slippers and other types of footwear were in shorter supply. But throughout the store, Walmart staff were positioning product bins capped with black liners and signs indicating they were not for sale until Black Friday.
On a conference call three weeks ago, Walmart executives detailed a few of the giant’s initiatives to get products into its U.S. warehouses, including adding extra lead time to orders, chartering vessels for its own use and steering some ships to smaller ports with the capacity to unload them.
“I’ve been at stores around the country and our feature mix looks much better than a year ago — definitely a holiday feel,” John Furner, CEO of Walmart’s U.S. operations, said on a conference call this month. “Last year, we were pretty reliant on things like snacks and beverages to fill space and we were having inventory shortages, so I feel really good about the positioning going into the holiday season.”
At Best Buy in Danbury, free floor space across several departments was filled with rows of flat-screen TVs on Wednesday. While one salesperson expressed confidence the store had an ample supply to handle any holiday shopping blitz over the weekend, another one was concerned the stock for some brands might run out.
At The Toy Room, Ramsey said she is expecting a strong weekend of sales between Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and will then get a head start on ordering more items for 2022.
“Companies are trying to get supplies out so quickly,” Ramsey said. “It’s definitely an interesting year — I’m telling people, ‘If you see something on the shelf now, buy it.’”