Splains a lot about the erratic nature of shopping lately!

By Anne D'Innocenzio @ AP.com, Sept. 6

NEW YORK (AP) —Gold Medal International is sitting on millions of dollars worth of socks at its North Carolina warehouse that it can’t ship to stores.

The reason? The 66-year-old family-owned sock maker can’t get enough credit insurance to cover potential losses if the stores can’t pay for the goods they’ve ordered.

Without that insurance, Gold Medal — and thousands of other suppliers facing a similar dilemma — would be on the hook for unpaid bills. But not shipping the goods to retailers means losing sales and big write-downs on inventory. The problem will only get worse if retailers can’t stock their shelves and shoppers can’t find what they want heading into the critical holiday season.

“I got the goods, I made them. I don’t have a liquidity problem,” said Paul Rotstein, who’s been president of New York-based Gold Medal for 30 years. ”But if I can’t ship $12 million worth of orders, guess what? I have a big liquidity problem.”

Before COVID-19, suppliers routinely relied on so-called trade credit insurance to get the reassurance they needed to design products, receive orders, and ship to retailers.

Now, with the pandemic creating so much economic uncertainty, many retailers are struggling and credit insurers are unwilling to take on the risk [....]