September Newsletter 2021
The holidays are officially here! At least for us, they are! As the month tips closer to October we are ramping up to the full swing of things for this year’s holiday season. We have been receiving a lot of questions regarding inventory levels, shipping timelines, new products, and more so we have taken the most commonly asked questions and will be addressing them in this month’s newsletter. Please take a look as things are moving quickly and we want to make sure you are adequately prepared as we finish out the year.
Ocean Freight Update:
If you haven’t already read the recent Time Magazine article talking through the current global logistics “crisis” and how it is driving inflation with products, we highly recommend you check this article out:
Why Is Everything More Expensive Right Now? – Time Magazine
This is a great eagle-eye view of what we have been dealing with over the last 18 months and what is driving current price increases. The reality of the current inflation crisis is that consumers will eventually bear this cost as you are already seeing on the B2B level. The more knowledge you have regarding this, the easier it will be to explain to an unhappy customer who may be challenging your pricing as they may not be aware of what is happening.
With this in mind, we are currently seeing container prices go past $30k. We have talked with our global logistics team and have been told that the reality of prices going up to $45k between now and Q1 of 2022 is not only realistic but probable. This would mean about another $1 increase per piece based on most current items that have already been impacted by these ocean freight rates. We will continue to keep you informed to the best of our ability but until demand for containers and space on freight liners decreases, prices are only going to continue to go up. We would anticipate to see these rates reflected on items as soon as mid-October.
Inventory Update:
Effective Thursday 9/16 we have updated all of our restock timelines on the website for both in-stock and out-of-stock items. If an item does not have an update listed on the site then we are still working through the production timing of this item and it is likely it will not be received until January 2022. We are mixing up our containers a bit as some fabrics are delayed in production so some items may be out of stock longer than originally anticipated. We apologize for this but we are doing our best to minimize OOS times to the best of our ability.
The good news is we are set to receive our newest items 16” Snowball the Yeti and 16” Rambo the Ram this week along with a clothing restock next week. We hope you enjoy these two newest additions as we are very excited to introduce them and hear your feedback on them.
New Digital Content for You
If you are following us on Facebook or Instagram then you may have already seen some of our new content pieces cover product details, how-to videos, as well as product shots of our whole 16” Plush Line. Be sure to check these out if you already haven’t as they are great assets for your customers and we hope they can assist you with your marketing campaigns. We will also be offering the opportunity to directly download the product videos to your website or YouTube channel as well. To streamline this process, we will be launching a page on our website featuring our media policy and guidelines you will be required to sign before you are able to access the files. We hope to have this live in the next week for you to access.
Our goal is to continue to offer more digital content for you to have access to as we continue to produce more pieces.
