With October now upon us, the holiday shopping season is just around the corner. For many in the sourcing world, however, holiday planning has already passed. When measured by the number of shipments, imports in past years have consistently peaked in July or August, when American firms receive the bulk of their holiday purchasing. Here are some trends we’re witnessing this year:

• The general market is slowing down — imports during July/August fell flat of expectations
• Retailers are turning to this year’s successful films for inspiration
• More affordable drones are a hot item
• Despite a focus on tech, certain classic products are still doing well

General Market:

Disappointing numbers for July and a rather meager improvement in August bring into question the strength of this season’s sales. Here’s a chart of the number of shipments entering U.S. ports for the first 8 months of the year since 2011.

July shipments were only 1% higher than June, and year-over-year actually declined by 1%. In previous years, July has typically seen month-over-month growth in the 5-10% range. August fared better; maritime shipments were up 5% over July and 2% over August 2014. However, growth wasn’t as high as we’d like to see given the slow July, and year-over-year growth was still lower than we’ve seen in the past.

Given the slowdown we’ve witnessed so far this year, unless September shipments are surprisingly high, predictions of 4% growth in holiday sales are brought into question.

Trending Toys:

In addition to more overall trends, we thought it would be interesting to take a peek at some specific products that seem to be particularly popular this season.

Star Wars

As we highlighted in a previous blog post, we’ve seen shipments of Star Wars merchandise skyrocket this summer ahead of the December premiere of the series’ latest film. Popular items include plastic light sabers, action figures, and plush toys. We’ve also been seeing some more eccentric items coming in, such as the “Battle Scene Heat Change Mug” to the “Star Wars BBQ Tong Set.” Toys “R” Us and Dollar General are among the largest importers.

Dinosaurs

Products related to another one of this year’s films, Jurassic World, have also been gaining popularity in the build-up to the holiday season. Shipments matching “dinosaur” or “jurassic” jumped from less than 100 per month up to over 500 in August. Toys “R” Us is the largest buyer this season; they’re listed as the importer on about 17% of shipments. Other companies of interest include Dollar Tree and Hasbro, listed on about 4% of records each.

Drones

Though drones have been gaining attention for some time now, this is the first season in which we’ve been able to identify a significant number of shipments carrying the items. The records here are detailed enough to provide us the exact model that is causing this trend: the Sky Viper Streaming Drone, a Toys “R” Us exclusive retailing at $99. This suggests that drone technology has improved to the point where it is economical for firms to manufacture low-priced drones and market them as children’s toys, as opposed to only the higher-end models we’ve seen previously.

Legos

Though high-tech items make the headlines more often, it seems like some classic holiday items are still able to maintain their popularity. Shipments matching “Lego” generally peak in August, and this year was no exception. Last month, we saw higher imports of Lego sets than in any month since we began monitoring in 2007. Almost all the shipments were sent to Lego’s subsidiaries in the United States, suggesting the sets are distributed to toy stores from there rather than directly from factories. Also of note is that the majority of Lego shipments do not originate in China, but rather Europe, including Denmark, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

Conclusions:

We’re interested to see the shipment count after the end of September for one last chance for growth this sourcing season. Regardless, it’s clear that despite retailers’ reticence this holiday import season, they’ve placed big bets on certain items. Even given falling consumer confidence, it’s apparent that both shoppers and retailers alike are getting excited for this year’s most in-demand products. Now that peak sourcing is behind us, it’s only a matter of weeks before these hot commodities make their way from inventory warehouses and into consumers’ hands.