As of Friday, Christmas is 43 days away, but that's not stopping people from getting into the holiday spirit.
Although Thanksgiving is still less than two weeks away, some radio stations - including our sister station Star 102.5 - have already made the switch to Christmas music on a 24-7 basis.
Meanwhile, some people have already started their shopping for the holidays, going to stores or shopping online for gifts and other trinkets for friends and family. This also includes going to local stores and getting in the festive spirit with indoor and outdoor decorations to celebrate the Christmas season.
Dave Gordon is the CEO and President of Gordon Companies, which owns Dave's Christmas Wonderland stores in Western New York. Despite Christmas still well over a month away, he says that this season at his stores and online warehouse has been the busiest he has ever seen it.
"We're absolutely busier than we've ever been in our history," Gordon said. "We were fortunate enough to bring in all of our good early to bypass the supply chain problem that most people are having, so our warehouses are fully stocked and, therefore, our Internet and our retail stores are very, very busy."
While Dave's Christmas Wonderland is open year-round, Gordon says that this year's Christmas season shopping started to pick up earlier than usual, and it has not slowed down to this point.
"I would say in late August, our Internet sales started to uptick as the people were watching the news and heard about all these shortages," Gordon said. "We have a lot of stock, so people were buying early and now they're buying faster and faster everyday, where we've now had to open our Internet warehouses seven days a week.
With the supply chain issues that are ongoing around the world, Gordon says he was aware of the problems that were likely to take place around this time. He wanted to make sure that his goods were coming into his stores without delay, and that he would have the necessary items this holiday season that other stores may not get in time.
"We were very aware that there was going to be problems with the container ships, the containers, labor, COVID, etc. overseas, so we got out goods moving much earlier," Gordon said. "We also used some alternative routes to get goods into Buffalo, New York - I won't tell you all my secrets - but most retailers brought all their goods in through the ports in California, which is where the big jam-up is right now. We didn't bring any of our containers that way, and, therefore, we got them and the other guys, including the big retailers, didn't get their goods and they're not going to get them."
It may come as a surprise to some with the amount of shopping people do on an annual basis to decorate their homes with lights, inflatables, and other indoor and outdoor items to make their homes shine bright during the holidays. Many factors could come into play with people returning every year to decorate their homes, but Gordon knows there are many different trends the public buys into each season.
"People are always seeing what other people have done and they want to change up what they did," Gordon said. "Or they put stuff in the garage and they ran it over with the lawn mower in the summer, or they put it in the basement and it got a little water [damaged] or it got destroyed, or they move. ... Blue becomes a popular color when gold was popular the year before. People want to change stuff, so it's just a cycle. It just never ends."
Christmas lights are always among the most popular items being sold at his stores every year, but Gordon continues to be amazed at what avenues people will go to to utilize their lights on a year-round basis.
"I sometimes wonder myself where all these lights go," he said. "Now-a-days, you can see 'miniature lights,' as we call them now, in restaurants year-round. People have them on boats; there's a lot of other uses today. The light business, which is one of our biggest product lines that we sell, sell year-round."
As for the differences Gordon has been seeing between sales in-store versus online shopping, he knows how critical it is in this business to have that online presence.
"The retail business is definitely going away quickly. The Internet has taken over for us and almost everybody. If you're not on the Internet today, you're in trouble," Gordon said. "Your big retailers are on the Internet as well. A lot of them use in-store pickup also for local people. But if you're not on the Internet today, unless you're a real unique business, you've got a problem."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Gordon below:
