Ralph Lauren expects to face higher shipping and commodity costs in the next few months. The high-end apparel maker is spending heavily to ensure stores are stocked with its Polo shirts and sports jackets during the holiday season.

Unlike its European luxury peers, which manufacture the bulk of their products in their home market, Ralph Lauren sources the vast majority of its offerings from outside the United States, with 40 per cent manufactured in China and Vietnam alone, making the company more susceptible to shipping delays and factory closures. These supply chain disruptions have especially hobbled the clothing industry, with apparel having the highest online out-of-stock levels among US retail sectors in the run-up to the holiday season.

However, Ralph Lauren is confident of having enough stocks to meet holiday demand, in part because it is spending heavily to ship products by air. While it expects continued variability of inventory flows, from quarter-to-quarter, it believes its inventories are well positioned to meet demand for the upcoming holiday and spring ’22 seasons.

The retailer expects constant currency fiscal 2022 revenue to rise 34 per cent to 36 per cent. But Ralph Lauren kept its full-year operating margin forecast unchanged due to higher freight costs and increasing prices of raw materials such as cotton.