The good news is that companies are starting to throw out promotions in order to combat the excess inventory that they have accumulated, according to the Telsey Advisory Group. "Inventory levels are high as companies chased as much merchandise as possible to support demand, which has now slowed. Ultimately, markdowns and promotions are starting to pick up," the Telsey Advisory Group said in the research note.
The problem was that the "mix of actual demand materialized differently than we had anticipated," Hennington told analysts. While supplies grew, consumer demand "shifted away from bigger, bulkier products like furniture, TVs and more," Hennington said. A Target employee pulls red shopping carts into the Santa Fe, New Mexico store.
"As it relates to Walmart U.S. general merchandise sales, we knew that we were up against stimulus dollars from last year, but the rate of inflation in food pulled more dollars away from GM [general merchandise] than we expected as customers needed to pay for the inflation in food," Walmart U.S. CEO Doug McMillon said during an earnings call earlier this month.
Saw a trucker on the TikyTok yesterday talking about this! He was a Walmart Hauler!