Supply Chain Issues Spook Consumers: Halloween Costumes, Decorations Hard to Find

Halloween decorations and costumes are becoming increasingly harder to find as supply chain issues plague the United States.

Major retail suppliers are already running low on supplies as cargo ships are log-jammed at California ports. Simultaneously, there is a shortage of truck drivers to supply stores, according to NBC 2.

Crissy Barchers owns the Halloween store Red Headed Witches in Cape Coral, Florida, and told NBC 2 that this year has been challenging due to supply chain problems:

We are very excited that Halloween season is here. We are under some crazy experience where shipping is a nightmare, getting product is a nightmare, our wholesaler can’t get product because the cargo ships are stuck waiting to unload and there’s no one to unload them. We didn’t even realize this was going to be an issue until mid to late September. By mid-September when all of our big Halloween initial orders started coming, sometimes it was half short.

I am up like a mad woman every day checking the wholesaler, checking the availability just hoping that maybe they’re getting shipments in and I can jump on it. It’s a grueling process, but every day I’m on the computer, I’m making calls, I’m sending emails, I’m trying to find alternatives solutions just to get some new product. Right now you’re on a 7-10 day waiting list, so if I place an order today, they’re not even going to process it for 7-10 days. Then you have to factor in shipping, so this week is really the last week we can even order anything because by the time you factor in how long it’s going to take to get here, we could maybe have a box that shows up on Halloween.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ben Wieber of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was unsuccessful in his search for a miniature haunted house to add to his Lemax Spooky Town collection, the Wall Street Journal reports.- READ MORE