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The room darkens.
Inside the globe the gases coalesce into an ever-clearer image ...and the magic 8-ball provides an answer!
That's not the best way to look into the future, but it seems like everywhere you turn somebody has done a study, a poll or a survey to see how business is doing, where it's going or where it's been. The results, as often as not, are as accurate as the ol' magic 8-ball.
One such group, the Small Business Research Board (SBRB), recently released a study showing that distributors consider taxes, overall economic conditions, energy/fuel costs and foreign competition, in that order, to be the most pressing concerns in the second half of 2007. The general business population, according to the report, considers those same things except replaces foreign competition with health care costs. No surprises here.
The survey appearing on the Construction Distribution website, indicates that 46 percent of those answering the questions see residential construction continuing to decline while 34 percent say it has either bottomed out or is already starting to come back.
The interesting thing is that among distributors there's still mixed reaction to what's ahead. More than 70 percent of those surveyed said they expect their revenues to increase in the next 12 months. While 54 percent said they expect the overall economy to stay the same or get worse in the same period.
If the economy isn't getting much better, and a major segment of the construction industry is still down, how can people in this business be optimistic? How can they, like ELFCO featured on this issue's cover, be recording record revenues on a regular basis?
It's because distributors in this channel are pretty darn good at what they do; and they're working hard to get even better. Rather than wringing their hands over the headlines, they're (you're) providing more and better service, adding new products and even adding new store or warehouse locations. You're becoming an even more vital part of your customers' day-to-day business. Knowing that your success is directly linked to their success, you're making it happen.
