The Advertising Specialty Institute shares an eye-opening article: supply chain issues that have been driving up product prices and causing inventory shortfalls in the North American promotional products industry due to Covid-19 could potentially worsen.

According to the article, shipping/fulfillment issues, rising raw material/labor costs, difficulties suppliers are having hiring enough staff, unfavorable exchange rates and other factors are contributing to insufficient inventory, higher product prices and lengthened delivery times for orders, which make it more challenging for distributors to meet client needs and capitalize on rising demand for branded merchandise.

“Availability of containers has been greatly reduced, with importers literally in bidding wars to secure space,”says Dilip Bhavnani, chief operating officer at Los Angeles-based Top 40 supplier Sunscope. “Recently, we secured containers at a cost that was five times greater than what we were paying pre-COVID.”

Reshoring manufacturing is one solution to this problem, and we are glad the government is (belatedly) focusing on reshoring manufacturing to help alleviate these risks. In the meantime, prices are expected to rise for the next year or so.

Read the entire article HERE