Survey: Majority of retailers seeing increased inventory challenges
Tariff turmoil is putting retailers in a difficult position with the holiday season set to begin.
Seventy-six percent of store managers have seen an increase in stockouts or empty shelves and nearly six-in-10 (59%) say it’s become harder to keep stock replenished, according to a new survey from warehouse/inventory software provider GreyOrange.
Almost eight-in-10 (78%) retailers have noticed customers shopping early (such as for back-to-school season or the holidays) or in larger quantities to mitigate potential shortages or price hikes.
One-in-four (24%) retail managers said they can’t find stock that their system says is on-hand at least once a day, while 63% run into this problem at least once a week. Stockouts are also leading to unhappy customers, with managers reporting a mean of 14 angry customer interactions per month related to stock location issues. More than three-quarters (77%) of those surveyed said they have lost sales because they couldn’t locate stock quickly enough.
[READ MORE: IHL Group: Inventory issues cause $1.7T in annual losses]
To make matters potentially worse, about half the managers in the survey have been warned by their superiors to expect price increases (50%) or shipping delays or reduced inventory (47%) due to tariffs.
“We see lots of managers operating with false confidence in their inventory visibility,” said Troy Siwek, general manager, gStore by GreyOrange. “They underestimate how often products go missing on the sales floor because they don’t always hear about it. A customer might not ask for help if an item isn’t where it should be. Most of the time, they’ll just walk out.”
In addition to tariff/inventory uncertainty, about half (51%) of store managers have reduced their workforce in the last six months. Of those, 59% have laid off staff because of budget cuts, with 42% doing so because of low sales. More than a third (36%) have skipped or delayed daily store tasks because they’ve lacked the workers to complete them.
Despite the challenges, retailers expect shelves to be ready for holiday shoppers. Nearly half (47%) say they’re more confident than last year about holiday stock availability, compared to 20% who feel less confident. Senior managers (55%) are more likely to feel assured about holiday stock than middle managers (42%), who are more exposed to the day-to-day realities of inventory problems.
“The fact that retailers are already pushing holiday merch could be a sign of this optimism,” added Siwek. “When they’re bullish, they flood shelves and build out big displays. When they’re bearish, they keep stock low and hold inventory in distribution centers. Retailers have spent the past few months shoring up their supply chains. They’re hoping those efforts will resolve their inventory issues in time for the holidays.”
GreyOrange’s research was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 500 middle or senior managers working at retail stores in the U.S., aged 18 years or older. The data was collected between July 16-28, 2025.
