When new shipments arrive at Flirt Women\u2019s Boutique, it\u2019s usually a moment of excitement for both employees and customers. But lately, those deliveries have come with a higher price tag.<\/p>\n
Jackie Konin and her business partner have spent more than two decades in retail. In the past five years, they\u2019ve faced major challenges \u2014 including pandemic shutdowns, supply chain disruptions and uncertainty tied to tariffs. Now, rising shipping costs are adding new pressure.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m finding like I can get merchandise from Canada cheaper than I can from California which in my mind, that\u2019s just crazy,” Konin said.<\/p>\n
Those increases are largely tied to climbing gas prices, creating a ripple effect for small businesses trying to stay competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cShipping costs are crazy,\u201d Jackie said. “Even if I am just shipping a shirt that is under a pound through UPS, even if this going two states away, it is $28.”<\/p>\n
Still, Jackie hopes there could be a silver lining.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully the cost of gas and the cost of shipping is going to be bringing more people into brick and mortar,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At Learning Express in Blue Bell, crowds gathered on Thursday, April 8, as customers lined up to get one of the hottest toys in decades \u2014 the NeeDoh.<\/p>\n
Moments like these might suggest booming business. But even strong sales can\u2019t offset rising costs.<\/p>\n
“We have already seen shipping prices go up especially with a hot product often you want to fly things in,” Brant said.<\/p>\n
Brant said the popularity of the toy has her store on track for a record-breaking year. But higher fuel costs are cutting into profits and complicating future planning.<\/p>\n
“I was anticipating big sales at Easter time so I loaded up so for a little while we\u2019re fine. We\u2019re starting to order for\u00a0 June and July, there is a shortage of product now too because it is so popular, now we\u2019re thinking, how much should we order? What will those prices be like? Brant said.<\/p>\n
For now, business owners said they are absorbing the higher costs while encouraging customers to shop locally.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of places right now are charging for returns, whereas before they didn’t,” Konin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When new shipments arrive at Flirt Women\u2019s Boutique, it\u2019s usually a moment of excitement for both employees and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83,28,30,29,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-161809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-money","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news","12":"tag-philadelphia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}