After the holidays, retailers usually clear out their inventory and customers reap the rewards. But this year might be disappointing, with supply chain issues disrupting your hunt for deals.
If your plan is to hold off on purchases until after the holidays, you might be out of luck because of supply chain problems, consumer analyst Julie Ramhold said.
“It made a huge impact on industries all over the place, whether we're talking about clothing or electronics, and it's just been this constant thing all year. So we're still sort of seeing the ramifications of that,” she said.
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Stores are expected to offer fewer clearance items due to lack of inventory.
“We're still going to see after-Christmas sales. We're still going to see these items discounted. We just may be seeing fewer of them overall, and the discounts might not be as good,” Ramhold said.
Black Friday deals this year were not very generous compared to years past, and higher prices didn’t help. But retailers still saw customers willing to pay more to get what they wanted.
To retailers, “it’s just sort of, put it out when they have it and people are going to buy it regardless,” Ramhold said.
If you’re still willing to wait for shopping deals until after the holidays, here’s what you need to know:
- Don’t wait too long to shop. Start looking the first couple days after Christmas, because that’s when stores will have the most inventory.
- If you see the item you want to buy, but it. If you wait for a lower discount, it might not be there.
- Start tracking the inventory of items you want if you can see that the numbers are dropping.
The website DealNews says the best post-holiday items to buy are holiday decor, winter clothing and video games.
