Inventory shortages - anyone notice any problem?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
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John

Ive been whining about the local stores here. They used to be great
considering I live in Cucamonga. But recently theyve been out of stock
, cant get things and excluding sales items in the national chain
store ads - the local stores in the chain.

I thought perhaps they were having lots of financial difficulties or
were ordered by corporate HQ to get really tight about profits. My
mind seemed focus on bad econ news since weve been in the down part of
the business cycle the last few years. It seemed weird because weve
been having an upswing in econ news here.

However I talked to a manager at a store tonight after ordering
something that was once again strangely out of stock. She says they
arent having financial diffcilutlies , and they are having a hard time
getting inventory.

So is it the opposite? Is the much hyped econ upswing thats supposed
to be happening nationally causing actual shortages ?

That would explain a lot - the weird shortages and inability to stock
items by ordering them even off the island. The rising prices in lots
of things like memory etc.

Kingston mem I got a few weeks ago was $59 after rebate then $63
two weeks ago and now $71 this week after rebate. In noticed many of
the local sales are really mediocre though Office max still has some
great sales they are usually out of stock or excluded from the local
store. Havent seen a lot of $29 or less smart media/compact flash
sales like I used to. The one thing thats getting way cheaper are hard
disks. Not a huge upswing in prices - many things are still low but
there seems to be a tiny creep up in some prices recently.
 
According to CNBC, last years lackluster computers & accessories sales
led to an overstock situation and a reduction in production. Perhaps
this year, with the stock market heading for recovery, sales
outdistanced production increases? I'm guessing here, as I have no hard
data to back it up.

Michael
 
According to CNBC, last years lackluster computers & accessories sales
led to an overstock situation and a reduction in production. Perhaps
this year, with the stock market heading for recovery, sales
outdistanced production increases? I'm guessing here, as I have no hard
data to back it up.

Michael

You know I was reading a bunch of mags today like Bus Week today.
And the economics page says things are heating up much more than
people thought and growth was much stronger than everyone thought it
would be in recent months.

People noted the recoveries after the 80s seem to take much longer
than usual to get up to speed. People wrote about the early 90s
"jobless recovery" that led to Bush Sr election loss and they noted
that the samething seemed to happen this time too. Companies are
reluctant to hire until way way into the recovery preferring to force
peopel to work overtime etc or outsource etc to increase productivity
- thats why theres the hubbub about outsourcing to India right now
(WIRED has a cover story on it) and the increasing trade deficit with
China - with basic manufacturing goods since they entered the WTO now.

So people expected a kind of rocky recovery for a while but were
surprised at the continuing strong growth thinking that the effects of
tax cuts (small) and gov spending were tapering off this year.

So that may actually be the reason. Locally things seem in a strong
upswing.

However I thought of another reason - the incredibly cold weather .
Could that be disrupting things? Could that be a factor? I havent
heard anything about that.

Who knows.
 
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