Walmart will work “all the way through” the holiday selling season to be sure “that we’re in a good in-stock position,” CEO Doug McMillon told President Joe Biden Monday during a White House roundtable on supply chain disruptions with 10 retail chief executives. “There are a few items, as there are every year with the hottest toys or things in electronics, that we wish we had more of,” said McMillon. Though all retailers are “concerned about the supply chain, we have more inventory than we did a year ago and have the inventory that we need to be able to support the business,” he said. Congestion and delays at the ports “has been a big issue, but we’ve really seen a lot of improvement,” he said. “We’ve seen an increase in throughput over the last four weeks of about 26% nationally in terms of getting containers through ports,” including a 51% improvement in “flow” through the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, he said.

Amid much-publicized retail shortages, retailers can tap into a $428 billion supply of existing returns inventory to combat supply chain issues, said a November report from Optoro. On average, 10% of purchases are returned, with that number rising to 30% for e-commerce, said the returns technology company; last year, more than half of consumers returned holiday purchases Dec. 27-Jan. 25. Many retailers process returned inventory manually, which can take weeks or months for product to get to the next customer, it said. A returns and reverse logistics platform lets retailers use machine learning and customizable business rules to determine where to route returns as soon as they are received, said the company. It can reduce returns processing time to days, “getting these items back on shelves and into the hands of the next customer while also cutting out extra touches and shipping."

Only Hong Kong is less immune than the U.S. among 50 countries to consumer tech price inflation from global supply chain bottlenecks and component shortages, a Grover comparative price analysis found. The U.K. consumer tech rental company launched its Electronics Price Index 2021 and compared the prices of popular electronics around the world in September and October “in the context of ongoing shortages and global supply chain issues,” emailed a spokesperson. “As we approach Black Friday and the festive season, the study shines a light on how current disruptions to supply chains, currency volatility and chip shortages are affecting the cost and availability of popular electronics,” he said. The study found Argentina is the most expensive country to buy electronics, with its pricing deviating 67.34% above the median value of all prices in the data set. Hong Kong offers the cheapest electronic items, with costs averaging 16.46% below the median, followed by the U.S. (14.97% below the median). Of all the electronics goods in the study, the PlayStation 5 is “the worst impacted by global supply shortages, with availability in only 12 out of 50 countries in brick-and-mortar stores and 18 out of 50 on e-commerce platforms,” said Grover. The company “witnessed first-hand how the pandemic caused disruptions to the availability of electronic goods globally,” it said. “We therefore decided to investigate the cost of some of the world’s most in-demand electronics to better understand how taxes, supply chain issues, currency exchange rates, and brand pricing have affected the retail cost of electronic goods in different countries. Moreover, we felt it was necessary to conduct this study not only to compare the difference in prices around the world, but to monitor the growing issue of global inflation.” Grover bills itself as the global leader in consumer tech rentals, enabling people to subscribe to tech products monthly instead of buying them. The platform launched in the U.S. last month, hiring former Uber executive Andrew Draft as its vice president-U.S. general manager.

Many of Solomon Partners’ retail clients are forecasting that congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, will persist at least through the fall of 2022, said Managing Director Cathy Leonhardt, co-head of its Global Consumer Retail Group, on a Conference Board podcast Friday. Roughly 100 vessels were waiting to dock at the two ports through the close of business Thursday, she said. "All of this is creating massive delays in the system," she said. "What we are seeing is certainly unprecedented." The solutions to the crisis are "challenging, given the concentration of the ocean carrier alliances” that control 80%-90% of the transoceanic volume, she said. Container cost increases are "extraordinary," said Leonhardt. Costs are "multiples of what they used to be," and one Solomon retail client "said it used to be $5,000 a container, now it's $20,000," she said: "Staggering numbers." Air freight as an alternative “only goes so far,” and air freight costs are averaging 125% higher than a year ago, she said. Supply chain costs “will continue to rise,” and inevitably will be passed on to consumers, said Leonhardt. “At some point, when you begin to see this price inelasticity, I do think you’ll start to see shifting spending patterns,” she said. “It means that consumers are going focus their spending more on necessary goods. We see that when the costs rise.”

Some 35% of U.S. consumers have experienced order delays in the past year for products that rely on electronics, reported Supplyframe Tuesday. Half of the October Supplyframe survey group of 1,000 U.S. consumers 18 and older who have had problems with product inventory said they involved consumer electronics purchases. Still, 55% plan to gift electronics including computers, smartphones and tablets during the holidays. This holiday season will create “enormous new pressures on the supply chain as it struggles to claw out of the shortage situation” arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Supplyframe CEO Steve Flagg. A third of survey respondents said they're more likely to choose the product with the quickest shipping, even if it’s not their first choice. The short supply of electronic components and semiconductors -- and, thus, autos and CE devices -- could mean far fewer retail discounts on vehicles and electronics, said Supplyframe. “This will also create huge pressure on supply chains to better manage constraints as consumer demand remains strong,” said Flagg. Over half of respondents in the poll said they understood the delays but were frustrated they were happening, said the report. Twenty-two percent said they were comfortable waiting two weeks for purchases to be delivered; just 10% said they were willing to wait longer than two weeks for shipping, despite the well-documented supply chain issues. About 90% said timing will be very or somewhat important as they make holiday gift purchases; 62% said longer shipping times haven’t deterred them from buying a product this year. Consumers aren’t optimistic that the supply chain shortages will resolve near term, with 47% seeing them lasting through 2022. Supplyframe data shows shortages extending into first-half 2023. Manufacturers need to transform their supply chain strategies using data intelligence, it said.

Terminal operators at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will impose a "traffic mitigation fee” to promote the movement of containers during off-peak hours in hopes of easing congestion. The fee was announced Wednesday by the West Coast Marine Terminal Operator Agreement, a group of 12 container terminals in the region, and will be in effect Dec. 1 to Jan. 31. The fee is “subject to regulatory clearance” by the Federal Maritime Commission, said the group: “The action is part of an overall effort to expand the use of warehouses, distribution centers, and trucking during the second and third shifts for the final push of holiday goods in December and into January leading to Lunar New Year.”

The FTC will vote at a Nov. 18 open meeting on whether to issue orders to large retailers and consumer goods suppliers to study the competition impact of supply chain disruptions, the agency announced Wednesday. The FTC Act Section 6(b) study would “focus on why these disruptions occur, whether they are leading to specific bottlenecks, shortages, anticompetitive practices, or contributing to rising consumer prices.” The White House launched a supply chain task force in June, and President Joe Biden in October addressed efforts from major retailers like Walmart, FedEx, UPS, Target and Samsung. FTC speaker registration and comment submissions are due Monday. Also on the agenda is a staff report on “the status of criminal referrals by the Bureaus of Competition and Consumer Protection that have resulted in criminal enforcement action by federal and state legal authorities.” Commissioners will vote on whether to issue a statement regarding FTC commitments in this area. The meeting is at 1 p.m. EST.

Walmart will build two automated facilities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to support its supply chain network, it said Tuesday. A 1.5-million-square-foot fulfillment center is to open in 2023, and a 730,000-square-foot grocery distribution center in 2024. The facilities will create about 1,000 full-time jobs; 40% of the jobs will require science, technology, engineering and math skills to support technical positions, said the retailer. The combination of Walmart associates and automation technology will move more than twice the volume of a traditional fulfillment and grocery distribution center, while “improving the accuracy, quality and speed of the fulfillment and distribution of products,” it said.

Vizio is navigating through the supply-chain disruptions that are affecting “so many other companies,” said Chief Financial Officer Adam Townsend on a Q3 earnings call Tuesday. “As inventories bottomed out in early July, we made strategic investments to rebuild shelf inventories as much as possible in advance of the holiday season.” Some of those actions had an impact on gross margins, but they were “prudent steps” to help build “customer acquisitions in the short term,” he said. Vizio shipped 1.4 million smart TVs in Q3, up 27.3% sequentially from Q2 but 36% fewer than the 2.1 million sets it shipped in third-quarter 2020 during surging demand from COVID-19 lockdowns. The results were in keeping with Townsend’s projections on Vizio’s Aug. 4 call when he said the company expected Q3 sequential growth in TV unit shipments from Q2, “as we continue to replenish low channel inventories and benefit from sustained demand.” Q3 device revenue declined 8% year over year to $502.5 million, but “platform+” revenue from ad-supported streaming Vizio’s SmartCast operating system increased 134% to $85.9 million, beating the high point of the Aug. 4 guidance range by $3.9 million.

Though ports are a “cornerstone” of the U.S. economy, “outdated infrastructure” and the COVID-19 pandemic have strained their capacity and “jeopardized global supply chains,” said a White House fact sheet Tuesday on the Biden administration’s “action plan” to modernize U.S. ports and waterways. Only four U.S. ports are among the top 50 busiest in the world, “and no U.S. port is in the top 10,” it said. Underfunded U.S. port and waterway infrastructure “has real costs for our families, our economy, and our global competitiveness,” it said. “Immediate actions” to address the problem include supporting “creative solutions” to current supply chain disruptions by allowing for “flexibility in port grants,” it said. The administration also will launch programs to modernize ports and “marine highways” with more than $240 million in “grant funding” within the next 45 days, said the White House. The plan also will identify projects for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction at coastal ports and inland waterways within the next 60 days, it said. “This plan will provide a roadmap for more than $4 billion in funding to repair outdated infrastructure and to deepen harbors for larger cargo ships.” Within the next 90 days, the plan also will “prioritize key ports of entry for modernization and expansion,” identifying $3.4 billion in investments “to upgrade obsolete inspection facilities and allow more efficient international trade through the northern and southern borders,” it said.