This Year, the Holiday Inventory Race Started in July

Every month I read the federal data releases. It comes with running a funding company. Most months there isn't much in them for a business owner. The numbers drift a few tenths of a percent and I move on.

The June reports are worth your time. If you sell physical products, wholesale or retail, in a store or online, the data says your biggest competitors have already started their holiday season. In July.

Maybe you have no intention of buying holiday inventory in the summer. It still affects you, because when the largest retailers move early, they take up the trucks, the containers, and the warehouse space everyone else needs too.

What the June data shows: a deliberate early start

Each month, researchers at five universities survey logistics executives for the Logistics Manager's Index (LMI), a widely followed measure of how fast the country's shipping and warehousing activity is growing. Readings above 50 mean activity is expanding, and the further above, the faster. In June 2026 the overall index hit 71.1, its first reading above 70 since March 2022.

What pushed it there was inventory. The report's inventory level measure jumped 5.7 points to 60.5, and the researchers traced the jump to two groups: large companies and retailers. Firms with 1,000 or more employees reported inventory growth at 68.6, versus 55.6 for smaller firms. Retailers out-built their upstream suppliers, 66.0 to 59.1, and the buying picked up speed as the month went on.

Why now? Partly confidence. Consumer spending has held up in spite of inflation, so retailers feel fine stocking for the second half of the year. The more urgent reason is import costs: the report notes that tariffs may increase in late July, and that retailers are pulling fourth-quarter holiday goods forward to stay ahead of potential Section 301 tariffs, a type of federal import duty, that the U.S. may implement at the end of July.

The knock-on effects didn't take long. Ocean freight data cited in the LMI report shows the cost of shipping a container from Asia to the U.S. West Coast up 109% in a single month, to about $6,687 per container. And the National Retail Federation, also cited in the report, estimates that 32% of consumers had already started their back-to-school shopping. Shoppers are running early this year too, not just the stores.

Demand is holding up, which is exactly why this is happening

Nobody is buying early because business is bad. The U.S. Census Bureau's advance estimate for May 2026 put retail and food services sales at $763.7 billion, up 0.9% from April and up 6.9% from a year earlier. Nonstore retailers, the category dominated by online sellers, were up 12.2% year over year. And the Census Bureau's first-quarter report put e-commerce at 16.9% of all retail sales, growing 9.8% from the year before.

Wholesalers are seeing it too. The Census Bureau's May report on merchant wholesalers showed sales of $817.4 billion, up 18.1% from May 2025. Take that one with some salt, since it isn't adjusted for price changes, so part of it reflects inflation rather than volume. The inventory side is harder to argue with: wholesalers' inventories-to-sales ratio was 1.15 in May, down from 1.31 a year earlier. Relative to what they're selling, wholesalers are carrying less stock than last year, right as the biggest buyers decided to move early.

Moving and storing goods is getting more expensive by the month

Even a business that never buys a single unit early feels this through freight and storage rates. The LMI's transportation price measure read 92.4 in June, its fourth straight month above 90. For perspective, that measure had spent the previous 52 consecutive months below 90. Freight capacity keeps shrinking at the same time, contracting for a seventh straight month by the report's count.

Warehousing looks the same. Available storage space slipped back into contraction in June, utilization climbed to its highest level since September 2022, and storage prices kept rising. The researchers point out that last year's version of this same pull-forward left wholesalers holding heavy inventories through the late summer and early fall, taxing storage networks across the country. If you're going to need space in September, the time to line it up is not September.

Smaller firms carry more of this cost than their share

One line in the June report stuck with me: in 2025, a disproportionate volume of logistics costs was borne by small firms. If smaller wholesalers once again become the supply chain's mid-stream inventory buffers, the researchers add, that dynamic could repeat in 2026.

Business owners don't need a survey to tell them this, but there is one anyway. In the Federal Reserve Banks' 2026 Small Business Credit Survey report on employer firms, rising costs of goods, services, and wages were the most common financial challenge owners reported over the prior 12 months, and more than four in ten firms said increased costs associated with tariffs were a financial challenge. In retail that share was 69%, the highest of any industry. Manufacturing was close behind at 62%.

What I would do with this information

I'm not going to tell you to fill a warehouse in July. A pull-forward is a bet, and the report itself frames the late-July tariff increase as a possibility, not a certainty. What I will say is that the math on waiting has changed, and it's worth actually running that math on your own numbers:

• Price both scenarios. For your proven sellers, compare the full cost of buying now (product, freight at today's rates, months of storage, the cash you tie up) against buying on your usual timeline and taking whatever import costs and peak-season freight look like by then. Per product line, not on gut feel.
• Let your sales history pick the products. Buying early into items that sold reliably last season is a hedge. Buying early into unproven products is a gamble with a storage bill attached.
• Count the storage before you order. June's data shows warehouse space contracting while utilization sits at a multi-year high. If the goods arrive early, know where they'll sit and what that costs per month.
• Protect your operating cash. This is the one I see owners get wrong most often. Inventory bought three or four months early means a season's worth of spending before the revenue shows up, and payroll, rent, and your suppliers still get paid in the meantime.

Funding an early buy without draining your reserves

The gap between paying for inventory in July and selling it in November and December is a financing problem. Established businesses solve it routinely, usually with one of two structures.

A business line of credit fits staged buying. You get approved once, draw against the line as each order or shipment comes due, and pay only for what you actually use. When holiday revenue lands, you pay the line down, and it's still there for the spring reorder. If you're weighing that against a lump-sum loan, our guide comparing a line of credit and a term loan walks through the decision.

A working capital loan fits a single larger buy. One approval, one deposit, a repayment schedule you can plan a season around. Speed matters here too. A bank line can take weeks or months to close, while our approval decisions typically come back in 4 – 8 hours, which keeps a time-sensitive buying window open.

Whichever way you go, put the cost of the capital into the same per-product math you ran above. If the financing cost eats the savings from buying early, the right answer is to wait, and a funding partner should be comfortable telling you so. Our guide on how business funding costs work shows how to put an offer's true cost on paper before you accept it.

We work with retail stores, wholesale and distribution businesses, and e-commerce brands on exactly this timing problem. Amazon sellers get a sharper version of it, since marketplace payouts lag sales in the very weeks the inventory bills come due.

Planning an early season with Monera Capital

Monera Capital funds established U.S. businesses, generally those with six or more months in operation and $10,000 or more in monthly revenue, across retail, wholesale, e-commerce, and more than a dozen other industries. Checking what you qualify for takes a few minutes and starts with a soft credit pull that won't affect your score. And if you just want a second set of eyes on the buy-now-or-wait math, that's a conversation we're glad to have.

Data in this article comes from the June 2026 Logistics Manager's Index report and from U.S. Census Bureau releases published between mid-May and mid-July 2026 (the May advance retail sales estimate, the May monthly wholesale trade report, and the first-quarter e-commerce report), plus the Federal Reserve Banks' 2026 Small Business Credit Survey. Figures are the latest available as of publication and are subject to revision by their sources.