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- The holiday shopping season seems to be starting even earlier this year.
- Some retailers brought in inventory earlier than usual to get ahead of potential tariffs.
- That means holiday gifts and related items are reaching shelves sooner than usual.
Holiday shopping used to revolve around the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not anymore.
Besides moving online, holiday shopping has been happening earlier and earlier. Some retailers, like Amazon, host big seasonal sales as early as October.
This year, retailers’ holiday products are poised to reach shelves and websites even sooner, thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs or the threat of them.
Some retailers ordered their holiday merchandise months earlier than last year in hopes of avoiding the duties and the higher costs that come with them, Kelly Pedersen, a partner and global retailer leader at PwC, told Business Insider. Rather than hold it in a warehouse, some are likely to put it out on shelves close to three months before Christmas, he said.
“This year is probably going to be even earlier than we’ve seen in the past,” Pedersen said. “Right now, retailers are sitting on inventory.”‘
Home Depot, for instance, already has all of its holiday inventory on-hand, William Bastek, the chain’s executive vice president of merchandising, said at an investor conference earlier this month.
“We have all of our inventory in-house already as it relates to the back half of the year,” Bastek said. Home Depot sources over 50% of its inventory from within the US, he said.
Retailers got a test run of the early holiday schedule with this year’s Halloween merchandise, Pedersen said. Some retailers put inventory for the holiday out in the summer months — a trend that has gained traction in recent years and become known as “Summerween.”
This year, retailers including Walmart and Lowe’s started selling Halloween decorations as early as July.
Restaurant chain Cracker Barrel also put out Halloween decor at some of its gift shops in early July — a move that CEO Julie Masino said in June was part of the chain’s plan on tariffs and a broader refresh of its retail strategy.
While decisions like that were prudent for retailers trying to avoid tariffs, they created another challenge, Pedersen said: Retailers could have to start marking down that inventory earlier than they would have normally. Stores tend to reduce prices on what’s on their shelves the longer that it sits unsold.
“Inventory is not like wine,” Pedersen said. “It doesn’t increase in price as it ages.”
Retailers may need to do the same thing, though on a larger scale, if they put holiday goods out earlier.
“We’re going to expect the same thing this holiday season,” he said.
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