Supply chain issues could lead to challenging holiday season for toy-buying

The holidays are right around the corner.

If you haven’t started shopping, experts say you might already be behind.

All of the pandemic-related supply chain issues are making gift-buying and giving more difficult.

The longer you wait, the harder it might be to find what you are looking for. And online shopping might not be the best bet because your gift may not make it on time. It’s best to head to the store as soon as you can.

Laurie Schacht’s job is to know everything about toys.

She’s the chief toy officer for Toy Insider, a website that reviews toys and games by age to help parents around the holiday season.

But she said this year, getting those gadgets and gizmos under the tree might be tough thanks to the pandemic.

“Every single point of the chain, we have a problem. And it’s not going away that quickly,” Schacht said. “We’re seeing toys that were supposed to be on shelf in August, actually, they were hitting September, October, some are just starting to get on shelves now. So a lot of times when you look and you see out of stock, it might just be that it has not even arrived yet.”

And when they do arrive, there will be some sticker shock.

Schacht said some shipping container manufacturers need to bring those toys over are hard to come by so they’re spending way more to get them to you.

That extra expense will fall on the consumer.

“You won’t feel it so much when you’re buying, you know $15, $20 Barbie doll, you’re not going to feel it with those, you know, $10 to $15 action figures, there’ll be $1 or two more. But when you get into those big-ticket items, those $200, $250 items, you can expect to pay a solid 10% more. And that’s where you’re going to really start to feel it,” Schacht said. “It’s a challenging year.”