NRF

This week we explore how retailers are balancing security measures with customer experience.

Latest The Stockout show explores sock puppets This is how RFK Jr. sees U.S. food regulators. (Image: FWTV) On Monday’s The Stockout show, which focuses on topics relevant to shippers in the retail and CPG industries, Grace Sharkey and I discussed how the election could impact those sectors. If Trump is elected, the Federal Trade […]

America’s imports are not signaling a recession, at least not yet. Inbound volumes are rising from the bottom.

After a bounce in January, containerized imports could drop this month to the lowest level since May 2020.

Holiday retail sales to climb 6% to 8%, NRF says

“For years, we have talked about the lack of available data to help with port operations. Ports are basically a black box when it comes to available information,” says the National Retail Federation’s vice president of supply chain and customs policy, regarding issues with global supply chains.

An IBM and NRF survey of consumers finds that hybrid shopping options are becoming the default preference for many.

Booming sales, thin inventories and more stimulus on the way provide the backdrop for potentially setting a new record for retail container imports in 2021. The National Retail Federation raised its outlook again for loaded containers landing at U.S. ports in the first half of the year.

Shippers responded to the last round of tariff increases on imports from China by front loading containers into U.S. ports in July, the National Retail Federation said. After bottoming out this month, the NRF forecasts container volumes will rise in October and peak in November.  July’s volume of 1.96 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) was […]