TOY STORES MAY BE FACING A DILEMMA THIS YEAR
By Edwin L. Crammer CPA- Every year, at this time, the toy store industry is blessed by two sources of revenue that they do not have during the rest of the year. Namely, Hanukah customers and Christmas customers. The combined revenues from these two sources usually represent a large chunk of the business’s annual revenue and, thus, is a profitable time of the year for those types of stores.
Most years, Hanukah and Christmas fall very close to each other in time. Christmas, as we all know, always falls on December 25th. But Hanukah uses a 13 month calendar which means the holiday falls on a different day each year on the English Calendar we all use.
This year, Hanukah falls a month earlier than Christmas. Actually the first day of Hanukah is Thanksgiving day. The tradition of Hanukah requires the parents of each child to give that child one present for each day of the holiday, which is eight days long. Most of those gifts are usually toys. That is a lot of toys.
Every year the toy manufacturers come out with several, what can be called, hot toys. These are toys that will be in high demand. Almost every year, you will read stories in the newspaper about a hot toy item that is no longer available several weeks before Christmas as the stores have run out of supply. They are usually not sure if they will receive replacement stock in time.
In the past, I have heard and read stories of people who acquired some of those hot toy items and reselling them for highly inflated prices. When a store acquired a new shipment of those items there would be a run on the store with much pushing and shoving.
Now with Hanukah falling one month before Christmas, those Hanukah shoppers are going to be out and about shopping for toys for their little tykes in the next couple of weeks. Of course they are going to be snapping up those hot toy items that will be promoted for this year’s winter market.
When the Christmas shopper starts to shop for toys for their kids, which usually takes place after Thanksgiving, there is a good chance that those stores will be depleted of those hot toy items. The stores are now stating that they are anticipating that it may be a possible problem that they may not be able to re-stock those items for the Christmas shopper in time.
Believe me, I am not trying to start a race war by writing this article. I represent the Hanukah side in this debate. My point in writing this article is to alert the Christmas shoppers to the possibility of a problem in this area this year. I suggest that they go out now and pick up those hot toy items so they will not be disappointed when they do actually go out and shop for Christmas.
You may contact: Edwin L. Crammer at Ed@www.eyeonsouthflorida.com
