Lorraine Hutchinson's expert conference calls across the supply chain lead her to believe that while bottlenecks for her companies are generally not getting worse, they're also not getting better. That said, there is line of sight to some improvement early next year and Lorraine does not believe shelves will be empty during the holiday season, instead expecting 80-90% of items to be available. Companies with higher prices, stronger brands and less exposure to Southern Vietnam, which tends to do a lot of footwear production, are best postioned to weather these challenges through the holiday season. Looking ahead to 2022 and beyond, Lorraine does think that it'll be hard for companies to remain as disciplined on price as certain retailers seek share gains but it will take time for inventories to normalize, and in the shorter term, retailers will probably find that they have no stock of some items and a lot of stock of others. And while companies may look to diversify their supply chains moving forward as a response to the issues of the past year or so, Lorraine does not anticipate a large push to bring production home to the US, especially at the lower end of the market, as the higher labor costs associated with reshoring are still too great.

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