Well-documented shipping delays have led to increased inventory, which is clogging some product categories and distribution channels with little relief expected before fall, according to licensing executives.

The situation appears most acute in apparel and home goods. Target and other retailers reported declines in home goods sales, which led to excess inventory in furniture and other products. And it appears there will be little relief in the short-term with the back-to-school season on the horizon and inflation playing havoc with consumer budgets. In fact, Target leased warehouse space to store extra inventory.

Abercrombie & Fitch’s Hollister division reported a 4% decline in first-quarter revenue due partly to the clearance sales required to sell off holiday inventory, a factor that contributed to its gross margin declining to 55.3% from 63.4% a year earlier, Abercrombie CFO Scott Lipesky said. That decline was also tied to freight costs increasing by $80 million from a year ago, a figure that exceeded the retailer’s own forecast by $15 million, Lipesky said.

To some extent, the excess inventory was expected as products slated for holiday delivery arrived in January. That in turn created a build-up as spring/summer products began arriving in February and sales slowed the following month. One bedding supplier reported retailers canceled orders for thousands of units, which led to discounts being offered to clear inventory.

“We have heard from retailers about canceling orders and the reason is that they were over-inventoried,” said a licensing executive, who recently had an order delayed until 2023.  “The question is whether they are over-inventoried because they ordered too much or because consumers aren’t buying? I think it’s a little of both because people are still shopping, but with inflation the business will likely slow down some.”

Excess inventory is also tied to some retailers buying products two months earlier in a bid to avoid the supply chain issues of last year. The extra products also came as the pandemic-related government stimulus payments to consumers ended.

“It’s crazy,” former Walmart president and CEO Bill Simon told CNBC. ″I mean an 8% increase [in inventory] would have been high, 15% would have been terrible, 32% [at Walmart] is apocalyptic. I mean that’s billions of dollars of inventory. That’s just frankly not managed very well.”

In response to the inventory backup, retailers have been “pumping the brakes a little bit” on orders, but “it’s going to work itself out and 2023 will be much smoother sailing,” said Anthony Esposito, president of Imagination Games, which sells the licensed Family Feud game with Steve Harvey through Target.

Yet not all categories are suffering the same fate as apparel and home goods. In luggage, inventory is tight as consumers resume travel, and retailers “are still over-indexing in luggage and chasing the category,” said Sam Hafif, CEO of Concept One, which sells luggage and backpacks under brands like Wonder Woman, Coca-Cola, Care Bears, and Line Friends. At the same time, Mattel has been “trying to fill orders to make sure there are no more out of stocks so we have been catching up to demand,” said Roz Nowicki, head of global consumer products and franchise marketing at Mattel.

And some retailers have, so far, avoided an inventory backlog altogether. Hot Topic spent the pandemic “right-sizing” inventory and is using print-on-demand more frequently to quicken the pace of product sales, said Ed LaBay, senior vice president for merchandise, marketing & licensing at Hot Topic. For example, Hot Topic has products connected to Marvel content available online within a “couple of days” of an episode’s airing on Disney Plus and stores that aren’t in stock yet can refer customers to the retailer’s e-commerce site, LaBay said.

“The supply chain has six months of product landing at retailers at the same time, so I don’t know that it’s going to go away immediately,” LaBay said. “We’re lucky because we did chase inventory and we are turning very quickly and that’s where we like to keep it so we continually refresh the assortment.”