Reasons you should Christmas shop earlier this year.

By now many of you have heard about supply chain issues affecting retailers.

It has been the many events which have come together to produce a perfect storm.

Last year with the onset of Covid 19 around the world many factories shut down. Shipping companies expecting reduced consumer demand reduced the scale of their operations, laying off staff and scaled back their operations.

As the economy slowed in North America empty shipping containers began to pile up in North American ports as exports from North America to Asia slowed.

Normally these would be filled with products and exported back to China.

This has resulted in a shortage of shipping containers in China. 

This has now lead to an astounding increase in shipping costs. Normally it might cost $3000 to ship a container from China to North America now costs over $20,000.

In addition North American ports and trucking companies are experiencing worker shortages.

The port of Los Angeles which handles 40% of the freight arriving in the USA recently had 62 ships off shore waiting to unload.

So how has the disruptions and increased shipping costs affected our operations?

Several of the products we carry have been impacted.

Firstly our Car Wall Shelves have been affected by increased shipping costs. The supplier has had to nearly double the wholesale price.

Let me provide an example, our 1957 Bel Air Car Wall shelf is priced at $189.95 

With the increased shipping cost the due to the supply chain woes the price of these Car shelfs are selling for over $300 on other sites.

The second impacted item we carry is the super soft, comfortable 6.1 oz prewashed Laid-Back t-shirts.

The supplier uses t-shirts made Honduras and lately has had some difficultly shipping due to a shortage of the blank t-shirts they use for the screen printing.

So if you have been considering purchasing these items, you might what to act while we still have these items in stock.