It seems that almost every day brings a new economic calamity and more speculation about how deep the current recession will go and how long it will last. It is also clear that the current crisis is larger and more complex than anything the country — or the world, for that matter — has faced before, and it is impossible to know how it will play out.
Credit: Kyle T. Webster
Although much of this information deluge is focused on housing, very little of what you see, read, and hear in the news is directly related to the remodeling market. You get the big picture, and it’s pretty bleak, but it’s also pretty vague. You may know exactly how yo-yoing gasoline and heating oil prices will affect your business and the wallets of your clients, but as for foreclosures and most of the rest of it, though menacing, it may seem too complicated and too far removed to have any bearing on your day-to-day business decisions.
So this month, we set out to find the rest of the story, to answer as best we could questions about what remodelers, specifically, can expect in the coming year that will have a direct bearing on their companies and their industry. Some of what you’ll find here is based on quantitative data, but a great deal comes from conversations with working contractors about how they have been affected and how they are coping.
In a business climate in which the future is uncertain and the forces at work seem beyond our control, we’ve chosen to keep one eye on what is happening here and now, and the other on the obstacles and opportunities that lie in the road ahead.