Posted on 07/25/2022 12:28:48 PM PDT by Red Badger
After two pandemic years of stocking up on stuff – desk, chair, bookshelf, dresses, blender, knives – Rachel Premack is now all about travel and saving what she can. Last year, she had the stimulus dollars and nowhere to go; now, she's got weddings and family visits and worries about rising prices.
This, on a nationwide scale, became the recipe for a whole new problem for some U.S. stores: a glut of inventory.
"It is just a really bizarre back and forth kind of situation," says Premack, who has followed all this as an editorial director at the logistics outlet FreightWaves. "Inventory managers at major big box stores don't even know how to navigate what's happening anymore, they are just exhausted."
Big box stores like Target and Walmart are particularly working through an excess of certain items.
Target has specifically named TVs, kitchen appliances, outdoor furniture, electronics and fitness supplies, with the CEO saying the chain did not anticipate "the magnitude" of the spending shift from goods to services. Some clothing stores, too, such as Gap, got stuck with too many hoodies and athleisure as office workers quickly jumped back into suits and dresses.
"If you think about it, [stores are] ordering goods three, six, even nine months in advance," said Mark Mathews, vice president of research development and industry analysis at the National Retail Federation. "Retailers base their forecasting on historical behavior. But there is no template for what consumer behavior looks like coming out of a pandemic."
This year's hot retail term is the bullwhip effect.
It describes how dips or jumps in demand can get exaggerated by retailers, their suppliers and manufacturers. Take the pandemic darling, the air fryer. When demand suddenly rises, stores rush to avoid empty shelves, ordering a few extras just in case. Their suppliers also order extras from factories, which also make even more extras – until, abruptly, there are too many air fryers right as people are kind of done buying them.
What does that mean now? Shoppers might see sales on some items, such as storage baskets or armchairs, particularly at big box stores. More goods will go to liquidators and discount stores. But it also means another chaotic year for suppliers, like Curtis McGill from the Texas toy company Hey Buddy Hey Pal.
The other day, a large retailer completely rescinded a commitment to buy one of McGill's best-selling sets. A big toy trade show produced fewer orders, too, he said, by over a third. Stores are cautious about future demand – partly because of inflation uncertainty, but partly because their money is tied up in storing and sorting out the inventory glut.
"You could say for being in the toy business this last probably 12 month [period] has not been as much fun as it should be," McGill said.
The shopping frenzy has slowed but hasn't ended.
In the next few weeks, new data will show how long this inventory glut might last, said Jason Miller, who tracks retail inventories and sales at Michigan State University. Initial evidence suggests the retailers with bloated inventories are already starting to get things under control.
Still, importers continue bringing in near record-high amounts of goods to the U.S., he said. That's because even though last year's shopping frenzy has slowed, Miller said, people are still buying more products than they did before the pandemic.
Okay, time to go out and buy this stuff on sale...
Nope, they are great. We are on our 2nd one and cook in it a lot. It is a Farberware unit. Front door swings down like normal over. Wire racks slide out on a track, you can put it in soapy water in kitchen sink to soften baked on food and oil.
Wife has food issues, a little olive oil and seasoning on most veggies (Okra, squash, & potatoes) and the come out great.
It warms a lot of items almost as fast as the Microwave, but does not make breads or breading tough like microwave.
Note: my wife and I share the kitchen. All aspects. We are both great cooks.
Not mine! I have two ninjas and I use them all the time. Nothing like air fried veggies, chicken, etc. Or, the one I have yhat is also a pressure cooker is great for hard boiled eggs. Shells peel right iff. It’s also a great dehydrator.
That is when people like me swoop in, and get a brand new one at bargain basement prices
An air fryer is wordsmithing. That is a contradiction of terms. An air fryer is nothing more than a convection oven. If you use it below sea level, it’s an air deep fryer :).
One we have has so small a drawer that you can only get a handfull of fries in it.
The other is as big as a microwave.
Since our gas stove’s oven is also a convection oven, it seems silly to me to have all three.................
They didn’t anticipate market saturation as quickly as it happened.
Now they have millions of unsold units! And no one to buy them!...................
There's a local family owned Italian restaurant that makes some of the best pizza in the world, but storing it in the fridge over night dries it out. You can freeze the leftover pieces in freezer bags, take them out weeks later, and the crisper heats them up nicely so that the crust is crispy but not dried out.
That might cost $6 or $7..but worth a couple extra bucks.
I agree, I have one and I just don’t get it.
I prefer my air sous-vide.
anyone using an air fryer for frying either spray the food with an oil spray or brush some oil on your food before using. if you are not liking the taste the reason is that the item tastes different without some oil.
My cooking isn't fancy enough to justify getting one.
cast iron pan works for me
It absolutely is.
Air Fryers dry out the food unless you eat it like within seconds, I tossed the only one I had a while back...Iron skills are the best.
Another trick it to run the leftover pizza slices under water from the sides - trying to get some moisture in the dough. Also, cover w/ foil and cook low.
“It dried-up my salmon. I’ll broil it from now on. It messes up the insides of the toaster oven. I would say frozen french fries are ok but carbs are not good.”
I found out that air fryers are great with salmon and other fish fillets if you air fry them frozen and turn them over halfway its prescribed time.
We bought an air fryer and my wife loved it so much we bought one with a drum roaster for rotisserie. Turned out the drum roaster was perfect for coffee and we’ve used it to replace the $1,300 drum roaster I had that’s now 15 years old and only functional in cold weather. Best part is with the air fryer we can run the air fryer indoors as it seems to control the smoke much better than the coffee roaster at < 10% of the cost.
Drum roaster also great for french fries. I buy the Walmart frozen 4 lb bags. The kids love them.
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