Waiting For...Murray?

I waited nearly a year for Dee-Lilah, my custom Mercian Vincitore Special.  At least I expected as much:  When I ordered her, the folks at Mercian were advising customers to anticipate such a lag between the time they placed their deposits and received their frames or bike.  

If I recall correctly, I waited about the same amount of time for my first Arielle, my dear, departed first Mercian. For ten or twelve months to pass from the time someone puts down a deposit and takes delivery of has never been unusual when ordering a bespoke frame or builder.  But, until the pandemic, the longest I can recall myself or anyone waiting for an off-the-shelf bike was three months, in the heyday of the 1970s North American Bike Boom.  That's how long it took for me to get my Schwinn Continental in 1972.  To be fair, though, I wanted a color that, I'd heard, Schwinn was offering in limited numbers.  

But I don't recall a situation like the one that's developed during the COVID-19 pandemic:  People have had to  wait a year for a bike.  And I'm not talking about a Mercian or a custom frame from someone like Richard Sachs.  Rather, folks are standing in line for Murrays and Huffys from big-box stores.  That has to do with the supply-chain disruptions you've heard about:  Factories closed during lockdowns and ship and dock workers, and truck drivers, either couldn't go to work or quit their jobs.

So it's particularly galling to see this:

 

 Why, in the middle of a bike shortage, is Target tossing brand-new bikes into a dumpster?  One would expect that if those bikes didn't move during a shortage, perhaps they could have been discounted or donated.  But no.  For all that the company, like so many others, likes to tout its philanthropy and environmental objectives.  It doesn't, however, donate merchandise under any circumstances. 

To be fair, many other companies have similar policies. They also, like Target, try not to sell merchandise at significant discounts:  If Target sells Schwinn or H&M sells a sweater, for example, at 50 percent off, the regular price seems much higher.  As for donations, some companies cite the tax and other legal implications of this practice.  Call me a cynic, but while I am willing to grant that companies find that it's too difficult or costly to give their stuff to Goodwill or a community bike center, I can't help but to think that tossing brand-new stuff comes down to the only two words I remember from the only economics class I took:  supply and demand.  Retailers want to keep the former low and the latter high to prop up prices.

I wonder whether the dumpster-diving mom who took the video had been waiting for one of those bikes for herself or her kids.