Kellie’s Korner The days are getting shorter and soon we will start getting cooler. Thoughts can’t help but turn to falling leaves, pumpkins and preparations for the holiday season. After an extremely draining 2020, and a confusing 2021, planning for the holidays this year will be very different. COVID not only affected human lives, social patterns and education norms, but it had an enormous impact on e-commerce and the businesses that depend on and support it. Many articles and reports have been written on the impact of Covid on supply chains. You may be asking what does that really mean? How does that relate to e-commerce and how does that affect me personally? Do I need to do something different this year in regards to holiday shopping?
retail stores. This to satisfy the consumers who will be waiting on “Black Friday “outside of stores in the early morning for the “hot” items. These “hot” items are typically sold out during these sales within hours of the doors opening as there is not enough inventory to go around. This year that will be applied dramatically. Consumers are very aware currently that inventories are even lower this year due to covid and supply chain issues. Remember Cabbage Patch Dolls, Talking Elmo or just about any new Nintendo game! This year inventory shortages will be the norm.
E-commerce began to increase over the past few years dramatically. Consumers stopped waiting at the stores and shifted much of their purchasing to home deliveries. This Well, the short answer is yes. After was a result of Amazon developing 35 years in the logistics industry and its own delivery network while using over 28 at UPS as Vice President traditional carriers as well. This of Sales, it seemed like a great time accelerated during the lockdowns as to share with you why this holiday more orders were done online. It did season will be different from any however take labor from the already other we have experienced in our limited labor supply. In addition, lifetimes. Amazon added vehicles and aircraft as well. This was all due to the need Historically, the holiday season is to move products to homes that called “peak season” in the logistics were previously purchased at malls industry, due to the dramatic increase and retail stores. Think of it this way, Former Vice President of Corporate in shipments that need to be delivered prior to covid when you purchased Inside Sales, UPS (Retired) both to consumers and businesses. anything you occasionally went to get This typically starts in September with businesses building it. During covid with stores locked down you’d go online and up their inventories. The ships arriving at the ports in the purchase those items now to come to your home via a carU.S. increase dramatically starting in August. The Ports of rier. Getting the product to you still takes time and a vehicle LA and Long Beach which are primarily fed from Asia are to get it to your home. This increased the amount of labor, no exception. These two Ports account for 46 of all importequipment and fuel being used by carriers. That has driven ed goods in the U.S. The rail system also sees a dramatic e-commerce up substantially. increase in container movements. This system is used heavily by package delivery companies to move these containers The number of ships arriving at the LA/Long Beach ports from the ships that are going across the U.S. Shipping comand all ports in the U.S. continued to increase as we were panies do this versus relying solely on over the road truckin lockdown. The ships from Asia typically arrive in Southing. The number of additional trucks and drivers needed for ern California while European ships typically arrive on the this three month period could never be fulfilled. All of this east coast. During the covid lockdown ships sat in the water is done as to meet the dramatically increased needs of the waiting to be processed. As the port strike showed a few
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