Gear shortages at stores

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ironmike
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Re: Gear shortages at stores

Post by ironmike »

The staff at the San Diego REI (which is one of the largest REI retail stores in California) have confirmed to me that this is not just a simple outage situation, due to for example a supply chain disruption, or a spike in demand vs steady state supply. It is in fact a deliberate reduction in physical store inventory, due to fewer people in stores (pandemic-driven of course). They evidently feel they would lose too much money by carrying normal inventory (especially for limited shelf-life items) in these times. Sucks for consumers...I guess we have to start stockpiling stuff.
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Jimr
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Re: Gear shortages at stores

Post by Jimr »

It's all interrelated. that's why I didn't want to get into too much detail. It would take a highly unusual atmosphere for a business to purposely allow stock-outs, which is exactly what we are in. Transportation costs tripled (they are slowly coming back down), delivery dates are uncertain at best and demand is artificially suppressed. For some, they have only two options: bad or worse. Stock-outs are bad. Spending a premium on inventory just to have it tied up in stock going nowhere is worse. Many businesses see their best (bad) option is to hunker down and preserve liquidity as best they can trying to ride out the storm of uncertainty.

For other sectors, it's just the opposite. For example, Asian dry food imports have been through the roof throughout this situation. Another sector, and this has me scratching my head, is artificial grass. Who the heck is buying all of this artificial turf at this time?

Another aspect involved in these liquidity decisions is whether or not the company received a PPP loan under the CARES act. For loan forgiveness, they must retain at least 75% of their employees at their pre-covid time and pay levels.
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rlown
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Re: Gear shortages at stores

Post by rlown »

I know of two now looking at artificial grass. A friend is doing his back yard and my Mom wants to do her front yard.
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