Yahoo Autos Giant Bow Market Is Slowing Down Right Along With New Car Sales
Yes Virginia, people actually do put giant red bows on newly purchased vehicles and then give those vehicles as incredibly exorbitant gifts. Sales of those giant bows seemed to slowing down, however, right alongside the formerly hot automotive market.
It’s another indication of recession (or bow-cession, as the Wall Street Journal calls it) that people are buying less brand-new vehicles despite all the various holiday-themed year-end sales. When carmakers lose consumers despite your Happy Honda Days/December to Remember/Toyotathon sales, they know they’re in trouble. It’s also hits the folks who sell the bows particularly hard, as the WSJ reports:
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Some makers and sellers of car bows, the oversize decorations that sit on hoods and roofs, report a steep decline in business this holiday season. As with many economic indicators of late, the data is mixed. But if weak bow sales are taken as a shiny red indicator, they may foreshadow a drop-off in the number of cars given as gifts this year.
Orders are down 35% this holiday season at King Size Bows, which sells thousands of car bows each year to dealerships and individual consumers. That works out to hundreds fewer bows than normal, says Amber Hughes, the Costa Mesa, Calif., company’s owner.
Michael Rudolph, president of Car Bow Store in Warminster, Pa., also reports that sales have declined, though he won’t know by how much until the end of the year. And on the dealership side of the market, Tom Maoli, the owner of Lexus of Route 10 in Whippany, N.J., says he ordered fewer bows this year because new car sales are down and his inventory has been low.
Won’t someone please think of the bow store owners? Where’s their bailout, Washington?
Bows on cars has been a thing for the last 20 years, ever since Lexus slapped a bow on its first cars during the first December to Remember sales event. It’s become such a silly trope that BMW used its holiday sales commercial to poke a little fun at the practice.
Holidays are here! | 2022 BMW Road Home Sales Event | BMW USA
