As the holiday shopping season approaches, some smaller retailers could find themselves attracting new customers who turn away from big-box stores facing mounting tariff pressures.

Burt Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a New York-based retail and consumer goods consulting firm, cited a Bloomberg report that tariff issues are slowing things down because manufacturers and shippers are eating about 50% of the tariffs and the retailers are eating the rest.

“Because of the cross-world traffic on the tariffs, inventory levels are low because people didn’t preorder enough before the tariffs went into effect in the first half of this year,” he said. “We have low inventory, and we have the highest prices in history in all 12 monthly consumer expenditure areas for the

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