"Consumers might see news about port backups, but that won’t hit home until they try to buy the toy of the year and can't get it. That’s when they’ll hit crisis mode."

Jennifer Bartashus, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, commenting in the recent Bloomberg news story, “Christmas at Risk as Supply Chain ‘Disaster’ Only Gets Worse.” Bartashus, whose coverage includes mass merchants, noted that the “supply chain affects everybody. Meeting customer expectations in an environment where everything is up in the air is nearly impossible.”