ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Decorating your home for the holidays could be more difficult this year, and your choices might be limited.
From big box stores to small businesses, shipping container backups at our nations ports are having a huge impact on the retail industry.
Channel 2′s Christian Jennings was in Alpharetta Monday at a store that is feeling the effects. For small retailers like Urban Hardware, the scariest part about this Halloween is the ongoing supply chain crisis.
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Dozens of cargo ships are idling off the coast of southern California because there aren’t enough people to help unload them at the ports.
The port of Savannah is overwhelmed with shipping containers too.
“This morning, we lost a $10,000 order,” owner Colby Rodgers said. “So that’s $10,000 in sales we’re having to make up for immediately. We don’t know if it’s on a dock, on a boat or just never left Asia heading in this direction.”
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Rodgers said the order was all for Christmas décor and that the customer placed the order in January.
“We didn’t have Halloween décor, and now we’re going into Christmas and we’re missing the Christmas season, too,” Rodgers said.
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Instead, they are bringing out Christmas items they saved from last year.
The global economy has snapped back after COVID-19 struck hard in 2020. People are eager to shop, but the supply chain is struggling to keep up.
“Probably in the last 12 months, we’re hundreds of thousands of dollars negative in supply chain issues,” Rodgers said. “So it’s items that we continually order, that we know will sell in season, that never came in.”
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