Appliance manufacturers, retailers deal with backlog during highest demand period

People in the market for a new fridge or freezer have probably noticed it’s slim pickings for options out there.

And that’s expected to continue for some time.

Jim Estill, the CEO of Danby Appliances, said the COVID-19 pandemic caused the company’s factories and others around the world to either shut down or severely cut down production.

“It has turned everything upside down. Anything in a factory has to be socially distanced (and) there’s absenteeism,” Estill said.

Along with factories’ deficiencies, there also were logistical ones when it came to delivering products to retailers that came with the pandemic.

Estill said the backlog is going to slowly start to dwindle away, with factories getting back up to pre-pandemic levels. But he doesn’t expect that to be a speedy process, with demand also growing.

“Prior to the pandemic, 37 per cent of households had a standalone freezer. Now that’s moved up to over 50 per cent,” said Estill, who noted, when it comes to fridges, Danby has seen a 20 per cent increase there.

“Demand for freezers has increased because people are nervous. They’re buying more canned goods but when they go and there’s no meat on the shelf, they say, ‘Buy a freezer and buy frozen.’ People are going with a (smaller) freezer as opposed to the great big old 200-pound freezers we had when we were kids.”

He said more people are also choosing to cook at home rather than go out, and people are buying small fridges to keep in their home offices now that more people are working from home.

While the shift in demand is good for the industry overall, at this time it makes things extremely difficult.

Estill said the shortage has been seen across North America — and that means in Saskatchewan as well.

Jeff Sastaunik is the general manager of Coast Appliances in Regina. While there has been an increase in the amount of inventory the store has been receiving, there’s still some shortages.

“Back in the last month, it has been really hard to get a lot of appliances such as freezers, top-load washers and a lot of just normal kind of fridges. They’re slowly starting to trickle in so we’re hoping to be back to capacity probably within the month,” Sastaunik said.

He said one type of fridge they normally get is seeing a backlog of 12,000 units.

But like Estill, Sastaunik is seeing an increase in the number of people searching for a new fridge, freezer or laundry unit. These past five months is the best span he has had seen in three years.

“We’ve held strong and my staff and I have been working like crazy to make sure all the customers get looked after,” Sastaunik said, noting they sold about 300 freezers in five months.

Estill said that demand isn’t expected to go down, as fall usually brings a large influx of people bringing in their garden veggies or their meat from hunting trips.