Want to blow some snow? You may have to wait a few weeks to buy a snowblower as it's getting tough to find one in the city now. After the big storm Thursday and Friday, St. Albert businesses sold out of snowblowers within days and are now reordering.
Want to blow some snow? You may have to wait a few weeks to buy a snowblower as it's getting tough to find one in the city now.
After the big storm Thursday and Friday, St. Albert businesses sold out of snowblowers within days and are now reordering. But there are still some shovels left, says Ken Jenkins, store manager at Rona.
“There are usually one or two people that think ahead and purchase and then it takes one great, big dump and then everybody rushes in,” he says. “We ordered deep to make sure to have (snow blowers) but we still ran out.”
While stores are waiting for the next order of snowblowers to arrive, those will quickly sell out again after the next big storm, says Jenkins. After that, people either own a snowblower or they've given up on the purchase, he says.
The estimated wait time for the next snow blowers to come out of Canadian Tire's Toronto warehouses is two weeks, says Michael Pascuzzo, general manager for the St. Albert location.
That is unless other parts of the country suffer from big snowstorms and need the equipment sooner.
Pascuzzo added that he still has a large stock of ice melt and snow shovels left, despite selling at least 500 pieces of two types of shovels over the weekend.
“That's a lot of shovels, and really that was Thursday, Friday, Saturday for the most part,” he says.
Walmart also sold out of snowblowers. They had already reordered and then sold out again, says manager Nidin Verma.
“Eighty per cent of people, like me, they shop when they have no option,” he says. “As soon as the snow hits we know we will sell shovels, we will sell tubes and mittens and snow boots.”
Winter sports equipment sales remained regular over the weekend.
Dave Ridd, manager at Source for Sports, confirmed that sales for skates and other equipment sold at the store have not gone up since the storm. If anything, businesses selling snowboards are probably doing well, he says.
“We rely on nice, -10 (degree) weather and then it will happen, people buy recreation skates and second-hand skates,” he says.
