Ty Warner, the owner of Beanie Babies, the largest manufacturer of soft toys globally, announced that he would be air shipping products to the U.S. to meet the worldwide supply-chain crisis.
"The widely-reported problems with global supply chains have cast a pall over the coming Christmas. There's too much doom-and-gloom out there," Warner said in a recent press release. "I'm here to tell our customers that, despite what they might have read or heard, Christmas is not cancelled."
Warner has financed over 150 air-shipment flights since the company's strategy change became effective in October. "Small retailers should take heart, too," Warner said in the press release. "While retail giants like Amazon, Target and Walmart might get preferential treatment from some vendors, they don't from us. We do not sell to them."
The flights are available in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, with its final destination at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. The average cost of a cargo flight is estimated to be from $1.5 million to 2 million.
Warner also said that even though the shipping costs have increased, the company will not increase the price of the products or the shipping, and its toys are still available in the range of $5 to $10.
Apart from being the CEO and founder of Ty Inc., Warner has offered donations worth $300 million and more to various charities. In fact, all the profits from the sale of the recently released Max the dog Beanie Baby were donated to NEXT for Autism with the aim of increasing autism awareness. He is also the owner of several luxury hotels spread across the globe and thus allowed frontline workers like nurses and doctors to reside at the Four Seasons Hotel New York free of charge during the pandemic and minimize contact with their families.