Shipping container crises causing Canadian retailers to suffer
A lot of small retailers and enterprises worldwide, including in Canada, are now suffering profit losses because of product delays brought on by the current global shipping container crisis
According to Julie Fass, a small business owner who has been running her online shop from her home in Toronto for the past 15 years, says that she has never had to deal with as many product delays as she is now.
“I have some orders that were placed back in May or even before then and now I’m looking at November-December arrivals, which really cuts it close to Christmas. And I’ve totally lost those summer sales,” she tells Global News.
According to Global News, the delays and profit losses are being experienced by store owners across Canada and retail experts anticipate that given a multi-month lead time for getting international goods to distant shores, it will likely lead to elevated costs to consumers during the holiday season.
“Problems related to shipping containers began surfacing in mid-2020 as demand for goods, primarily exports out of China, began to pick up. Factor in persistent global supply chain issues while economies reopened around the world and you have a recipe for backlogs and increased costs,” the Global News mentions in their article.
The article also quotes Michael LeBlanc, a senior advisor with the Retail Council of Canada who says that the current skyrocketing costs are unprecedented.
‘Everything from shipping pallets to the cost of containers to getting on to the boat. We’ve seen all these costs hitting retailers. So it is both causing slowdowns, a shortage of supply in certain items and cost increase,” he tells the Global News.
Fass also adds that the shipping container crisis is affected items coming from China and Europe, and most noticeably larger products, which take up more volume in a shipping container, such as furniture.
“Locally produced goods aren’t immune though, as they sometimes require parts from overseas, which can be held up by the crisis. My suppliers have already started raising their prices by 5% to 20%. We eat some of that and I try to eat it as long as I can, but if this continues, I would imagine that I can’t hold off much longer,” she says.
Looking at the current overseas situation of small retailers amid the shipping container crisis, we can only imagine how long this is going to start affecting the local Malaysian industry, if it hasn’t already.
For the full Global News article, read it here.
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