Despite the typical holiday shopping rush, new data from the research group Factset shows that inventory at big retail chains is still much lower than pre-pandemic levels.
On Tuesday, we heard from multiple shoppers at the Michael's store in Santa Maria who say while store shelves have been mostly full, they have noticed certain items are out of stock.
"You won't have a variety of items," said shopper Georgia Kerin.
"The regular Christmas items they had a lot of, but items I use to make things, they were out of," added fellow shopper,Jaclyn Pigeon. "I usually have to go online if I can't find stuff in the store."
But turning to online shopping through sites like Amazon is what in-person retailers are fearing.
The National Retail Federation anticipates this year's annual holiday sales growth will be roughly 6% lower than the 13.5% growth seen a year ago. In an effort to clear inventory during the holidays, big retailers like Michael's are turning to promotional sales.
"They had a lot of sales going on the bigger yarns, but I have not seen a lot of overstock," Pigeon told KSBY.
Associates at Kevin's Jewelers at the Santa Maria Town Center mall say they have taken the same approach.
"Our managers are just trying to get the lowest prices for everybody so everything can go out," said assistant store manager Selva Nava.
But despite the discounts, other locals say the ongoing impact of inflation is keeping them from spending more this holiday season.
"We really have to watch what we do and as it gets closer to the holidays, we are obviously going to do that too," said Santa Maria shopper Hector Guerra.
We also tried reaching out to Michael's corporate public relations team to get a sense of what their recent inventory has looked like, but we did not hear back.
According to recent data, the retailers with the most inventory in the last quarter included Kohls, Target, Walmart and Gap.
