Just days to go, holiday shoppers faced with supply chain delays, are hedging their bets

Believe it or not, it’s almost here. Christmas, at the end of a pandemic year.

“Yeah, it’s coming up, it’s just this week, isn’t it?” smiles Sienna Sweeney, of Coon Rapids. “Doesn’t seem like it,” she laughs.

Of course, this is a holiday shopping season, unlike any other. With the pandemic raging, online vendors like Amazon began offering deals in October, much earlier than normal.

“In October, 22% of consumers said they would do less last-minute shopping,” recalls Kim Sovell, a marketing professor at the University of St. Thomas. “It seems the goal then was ‘let’s get this done.’”

But that was then, and this is now. Many shoppers are voicing concerns about a supply chain slowdown that could affect how they purchase gifts in these last few days.

“It’s peak,” declares Derry Walker, who was visited Rosedale Center with his family Sunday. “Packages are flying everywhere, everybody’s trying to shuffle and make do the best they can. So I wouldn’t doubt if there’s a lot of last minute shopping going on.”

This year, there’s less time to get that perfect gift, with just 29 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. At Rosedale, COVID precautions, mandatory masks, safe-distancing stickers and no-touch areas are now part of the landscape. Shoppers say they just want to be safe.

"Whenever you’re in a store and there’s lot of people, it gets a little bit stressful, compared to looking back a year ago,” Sweeney says.

The mall was busy, but not packed with wall-to-wall shoppers. But everyone knows time is running out.

"We’re seeing panic shopping at an all-time high just a few days before Christmas,” says Sarah Fossen, Rosedale’s Director of Marketing and Experience.

The National Retail Federation projected that 150-million Americans would be doing brick and mortar shopping Saturday. Figures for Sunday should be available in a couple of days. All of this, despite an expected $218-billion spike in online and non-store shopping this season.

"People are getting email notifications that their things aren’t going to make it in time, and so they’re just panicking,” Fossen explains. “They’re buying the rest of their list and all of the things that are delayed."

And now, concerns about the supply chain are prompting some shoppers to hedge their bets— by making a few in-store purchases.

"Supply chains are really weird right now,” says Eli Hoest, from Golden Valley. “I did mostly online shopping, I’m getting some last minute gifts for my parents and stuff like that."

Sovell says there are shoppers out there driven by the Christmas deadline, but also worried about safety.

"All of a sudden, kind of mercenary in their approach. They’re going to order, they’re going to drive,” she says. “They’re going to do curbside pickup, or run in and pickup so they can get this done as quickly as possible."

A survey by the global payments provider Klarna found that 64% of last-minute shoppers are heading to the stores, while 55% are buying gifts online, even if that means missing the Christmas deadline.

The National Retail Federation says pickup services are skyrocketing in popularity. The NRF says Target, for example, has increased its in-store and curbside pickup services by 217% over last year. Even with all that, Hoest is probably the kind of shopper every brick and mortar merchant wants to see: an impulse buyer.

In this case, a shirt for his father.