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Costco shoppers will feel the impact of product shortages this holiday season in the form of reimposed shopping limits! The industry-wide supply chain and shipping problems that have plagued retailers like Target have impacted the wholesale chain, too, the company just announced. As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the Washington-based company announced that customers will now face buying limits on key items as we head into the last months of 2021. Say it ain’t so!
CFO Richard Galanti recently revealed that stores are bringing back product limits on household items like toilet paper, bottled water and paper towels. While this might trigger flashbacks to those panicked first days of Covid when even Costco’s colossal aisles appeared bare, the company asserts that there is a plus side to the limitation: it helps them to avoid raising prices.
During the Q4 earnings call on September 23rd, the financial officer of the membership club said the company is limiting customers because it wants to make sure items stay in stock as it faces shipping delays, truck driver shortages and other extensive delay timelines of 8-12 weeks (up to 16-18 weeks in worst cases!).
It's sort of like March 2020--but slightly different. "A year ago there was a shortage of merchandise. Now they’ve got plenty of merchandise but there’s two- or three-week delays on getting it delivered because there’s a limit on short-term changes to trucking and delivery needs of the suppliers, so it really is all over the board," Galanti explained.
Fans were quick to react on Twitter. " It won’t be long before we have the same meat shortages that the UK is having now," wrote on user. "I am restocking my chest freezer this weekend," they continued. "You know it’s bad when Costco reinstates bottled water, cleaning product and TP limits," wrote another. Yikes!
And product limits aren't the only drastic lengths Costco is going to ensure on-time delivery; the company has chartered their own ocean vessels to transport items from overseas.
"We've also chartered three ocean vessels for the next year to transport containers between Asia and the U.S. and Canada, and we've leased several thousand containers for use on these ships," Galanti revealed "Every ship can carry 800 to 1,000 containers at a time, and we'll make approximately 10 deliveries during the course of the next year." Wow!
