Disruptions parade in Retail

I was reading an article from Morning Brew and started this as a post but gone over the characters limits so now it's an Article about another Article :P

I would re-phrase the Articles title from Why it's so hard to find dumbbells in the US to Why it's so hard to find anything in the US

When the panic started toilet paper became the new Bitcoin rush, then it got warmer and Bicycle shops started looking like BestBuy in the middle of a Black Friday fight for 55" 4K UHD LCD TV... now I'm reading about dumbbells... and there is many more, basically each product got hit by supply chain disruption, delays in ports, etc the answer is obvious: it's expensive to keep inventory within the US, cost of warehousing is bigger than "just-in-time" optimized supply chain except it's not always just-in-time and when it's not everything suddenly goes wild :)

I would not touch a topic of how to generally solve or soften possible disruptions but what I can see repeatedly inside different articles is that anytime consumers pushed out of their buying comfort zone they explore and to make a decision need to gather knowledge.

Let's get back to the dumbbells...

So the formula is: Habits disruption == Supply chain disruption that leads to Shortage of inventory which we need to multiply by Lack of knowledge to make a proper buying decision

There’s also a shortage of knowledge because so many of us are first-time buyers. Gyms made these decisions for us. Trying to buy them now includes questions not just pertaining to the weight, but also shape, material, and which companies to purchase from and which to avoid — a dumbbell can go for $40 or $150 depending on where you’re purchasing it. Friends like Andrew, who have done the research and the work, are godsends. Their recommendations are valuable and trustworthy.

That quote from the original article highlights 2 main things:

• More content for online shopping to make sure the customer is able to make an informed proper buying decision
• More power to the customer reviews/recommendations, where new customers can see either previous customers reviews or influencers recommendations

Bunch of interesting facts gathered from the article:

• 95 percent of the world’s dumbbells are made in China
•  it can take up to months — if not longer — to ramp up a new factory
• 25% of 2,000 gym-goers asked do not plan to return to the gym even after the pandemic ends. (an OnePoll survey at June 2020)
• Morning Consult poll for the week of August 17 found only 14% of respondents said they would feel comfortable going to the gym in the next month.

From those findings from article, it seems like gym activities are moving in-house and a bigger portion of people would stay at home in the future as well, that will provide more opportunities to the online stores because big players running out of stock for a long period of times lost some portion of their loyal customer base and are a bit slower on transformations in their content strategy too, smaller players have the ability to gather some portion of their customer base.

Gym video influencers will become the more popular and a bigger amount of Gym-based fitness trainers will become the next stars of this field (bigger competition from newcomers that just entering the space)

BTW call to action :)

I'm here to help with the tech part of your eCommerce adventures, drop me a line, and tell what are your current priorities/goals/challenges/pains and I would suggest a bunch of ideas how things can be improved!

More info in the Article:

Credits: headerphoto - Paulina Grabowska https://www.pexels.com/@karolina-grabowska