Where to Find Big Sales and Get a Jump on Holiday Shopping
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Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, August 24th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Consumers are cutting back on spending, and that means retailers are dealing with mountains of unsold inventory in their warehouses. Now stores are slashing prices, and for consumers, it means some of the best sales in years.
People don't usually think about Christmas gifts in August, but this unusual set of deals could mean major savings for those who do.
Rachel Wolf covers consumer trends for The Wall Street Journal. Coming up, we'll talk with her about which products you can score the best deals on now and what you might want to wait to buy until later in the year. That's after the break.
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Big retailers have got warehouses full of extra unsold inventory.
Why are retailers slashing prices and how widespread is the excess inventory problem?
And to get rid of it, they're slashing prices in stores. So where can consumers find the best deals? And what should they wait to buy in the hopes of getting an even deeper discount? WSJ reporter Rachel Wolf joins us with more. Hey, Rachel, thanks very much for being with us.
Thanks so much for having me.
So, Rachel, we've heard from big retailers like Target and Walmart that these huge piles of inventory are cutting into their profits. But how widespread is this issue across the retail industry?
So because of all of the supply chain induced shortages from last year, companies ordered a lot of products in advance this year. But then high inflation cut into consumer demand. So it's pretty widespread across lots of different industries right now that there is all this surplus.
But wouldn't the back to school shopping season help reduce inventory?
So the period between back to school and Thanksgiving is typically slower for retailers. In a normal year, stores would have timed their inventory accordingly and held off on major promotions until shoppers got into a more festive frame of mind. But this year, they have no choice but to start some of these sales early.
Okay, so let's talk about what consumers can expect. What steps are retailers taking to reduce their inventory levels?
So they're planning big sales. Retailers are trying to attract consumers right now who are less likely to spend money on goods than they were a year ago. Right now consumers are grappling both with really high inflation and with wanting to spend money on the experiences and travel that they missed out on during the pandemic. So while a couple of years ago you might have been really eager to buy a new air fryer, now you'd rather spend that money at a restaurant with some friends. And so retailers, you know, they're trying to entice consumers to come to their stores and so they're offering these discounts that are kind of out of season as sales when there wouldn't ordinarily be sales to try to get some of those customers through the door.
Well, that's good news for shoppers, but people usually don't ramp up shopping or even look for deals like this until later in the year, right?
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