With the exception of the housing market, it seems we’ve lived in a relatively non-inflationary world for quite some time – until recently.  There have been multiple stories in The Weekly Consensus and other news sources on the continuing supply chain delays and bottlenecks that all importers and distributors have faced in 2021, which have […]

Last year, when Holiday sales forecasts were made, times were as unprecedented as ever experienced.  COVID cast a long shadow.  However, enough optimism prevailed that prognosticators foresaw modest Holiday gains over 2019 ranging from 1% to 4%. What actually happened made Santa blush.  Holiday sales gained 8.3%.  There were plenty of supporting economic factors: stimulus […]

With digitally native darlings Warby Parker and Allbirds preparing to make their initial public offerings this week and later this fall, respectively, the companies’ regulatory filings point to the return of a recent trend in consumer retail: clicks to bricks. Clicks to bricks, or digitally native brands opening brick and mortar stores, was building momentum […]

The inescapable disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many of us to focus on the near-daily ups and downs of the past year and a half.  But a recent announcement from a fast fashion retailer served as a reminder that certain trends were with us long before the pandemic and will last far […]

On March 1st, I wrote in this space about a scarcity of shipping equipment and containers available for ocean freight from China to the U.S. and Europe impacting the supply chain for consumer goods and the costs companies were paying to import products. At that time, indexes tracking such container rates had surpassed $5,000 from […]