Millwork and Casework Industry Question

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Well, thank you very much for a link to 2011 census data. /sarcasm

Sorry, but that is not helpful, Alan.

Mark Elliott

Member

Just a little bit about the Detroit market.

It's not so much that there is new housing going up, it's all about people updating their homes because they're not going to move any time soon. But of the houses that are being built, many are 7 figure homes.

The 2 major store fixture companies are working overtime to keep up with demand.

At one time, and I think it still may be true, Oakland County, one county north of Detroit, was 1 of the top 10 counties for wealth.

The auto industry made this a very well to do area.

As for the level of work, it's all pretty much high end that I'm seeing and dealing with.

Mark

Alan F.

Charles,
You could make a couple of mouse clicks and get 2012 data which is the most recent the census has.

You could search state tax records, business license records, contractor license boards and maybe come up with a list of companies that are no longer here.

Personally this is a statistic that has no measurable value to me. Without knowing a set of circumstances that led a profitable company to closing during the worse recession in a few years there is no meaning or sales value to me.

Back to the original question if 15 shops went out of business in the middle of Nebraska because they all sold into highly leveraged areas on the east and west coast and made no local sales, other than that part of Nebraska getting hurt how is it locally relative, they would have been victims of customers that were no longer buying from them for reasons that had nothing to do with their companies geography and everything to do with the geography of where they made their sales. So what is the usefulness a statistic of their closing and geography? Is the plan to get a meaningful statistic based on closings and then try and determine cause or how much market is now available?

There is not enough information in a geographic closing to make meaningful assumptions unless you measure every metropolitan area by size and closing and can determine deviations from the mean that exceed an expected deviation.

At what point do we get back to why is this information valuable to us in selling our work or selling our business or managing our business.
A-

Charles

Member

Mark,

Thank you for your response. That was the type of anecdotal evidence that I sought. There are several valuable points that I can garner from your observations that may apply to my market (in a completely different part of the country).

My goal is to get a feel for the current mood or sentiment of buyers and the market. I know this varies regionally and locally, but sometimes trends are felt on a national basis as well.

Past statistics do not predict the future any more than past performance of the stock market can predict future stock prices. So, I either take historical statistics with a grain of salt, or disregard them totally. (Yes, I know that people who ignore the past are likely to repeat the same mistakes. But, that isn't the point. One needs more information than just history.)

No disrespect to the numbers in the government-collected census statistics, but knowing what is happening in real-time, as the market is constantly changing, is more important to me. In fact, it may mean life or death of a business if the wrong assumptions are made. Being able to spot current and future trends in the marketplace is extremely vital. And that is "information valuable to us in selling our work or selling our business or managing our business."

Thanks, guys.

cabmaker

Charles,

A tautological statement is an unnecessary repetition of the obvious. In order to have any significance it needs to provide some call to action. To say the sky is often blue is one thing, to say we anticipate a heat wave so drink plenty of water and remember to check in on your elderly neighbors is quite another.

We know that people are sometimes happy and they tend to spend more money when their mood is buoyant. What we are looking for is what kinds of events constitute yellow flags for contingency planning.

A lot of would-be entrepreneurs deal in fuzzy platitudes. They don't have a plan for failure because in their world there is no such thing as a problem, there are only opportunities. These people sleep through the manifestations of problems because they can't recognize the clues. After they finally wake up they spend some time trying to develop a strategy to combat the problem and then they have to survive through phase three while they are waiting to discover if phase two strategy actually works.

A more experienced entrepreneur can recognize a storm front because they have proactively determined what constitutes a yellow flag. When they see one they keep an eye on the horizon but immediately go stand next to the red lever. When the second yellow flag pops up they pull the red lever. The length of time period between when problem manifests and solution kicks is greatly decreased while odds of success are greatly enhanced.

So what kinds of events constitute yellow flags in our industry? That's where this question should be focused and that's how past is prologue to the future.

Pat Gilbert

That census bureau statistic might be more prescient than you think.

A central part of the pros marketing study is demographics, for good reason.

I have seen it said about the US market: "It is a collection of seven nations and three quasi-independent city-states, each with its own tastes, proclivities, resources and problems. "

He predicted the Utah area to grow quite a bit in the next 10 years. Where as LA and Orange County not so much because of demographics.

Job growth = population growth = more housing = more commercial work.

The key would be to look where the new jobs are being created. It ain't Calif.

A part of this story is some re shoring of jobs from China.

But as far as real job creation goes that has been hamstrung for reasons that are too volatile to talk about.

Where growth will be in the next 10 year

7/17       #21: Millwork and Casework Industry Ques ...

Roger Templeman

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