COLD CALLING
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DANNY WILLIAMS
‘COLD CALLING’
Each month our special correspondent Danny Williams* replies to a reader’s letter...
“The ups and downs of the past couple of years have been very difficult to keep up with Danny. Will the bubble go pop in 2022?” KP Northants We have now enjoyed a long enough period of good sales for it to have become the norm for many KP. By this I mean that fabricators have had the confidence to invest in new machinery where you can get it and certainly, in my case, decent used kit and especially automated, which has reduced the dependency on skilled labour as well as enabling higher volumes. Installers in the meantime, are buying new vans when they can get hold of them, opening new offices and expanding like crazy. And generally, the supply side has got its collective backsides into gear at long last, with the glaring exception of one or two aluminium syscos, who still remain remarkably confused by the combination of the words ‘customer’ and ‘service’. In response to your question KP I have polished off the crystal sphere, peered into the tea leaves and cast the rune stones in preparation for my response, which of course remains a guess, albeit an educated one. Any sort of forecasting both currently and for the past 18 months is at the mercy of Covid, which has side-lined even Brexit and climate change as the dominant influencer of our collective fortunes. Just as we are learning how to deal with life under its influence, Covid takes a new turn, or at least provides our illustrious and comb-shy leader with an opportunity to put us on a further war footing to deflect some of the brown-stuff he has drawn upon himself. Again. But such is the human instinct for survival and prosperity that we all just keep on consuming and spending. And more than ever thankfully, on our beloved castles. Surely the bubble must burst… Actually…I do not think that it will. Rather, I believe that it will deflate somewhat, with trade returning to what might once have been regarded as a fairly satisfactory ‘normal’. Nonetheless, for so long has
“In response to your question KP I have polished off the crystal sphere, peered into the tea leaves and cast the rune stones in preparation for my response, which of course remains a guess, albeit an educated one. Any sort of forecasting both currently and for the past 18 months is at the mercy of Covid, which has side-lined even Brexit and climate change as the dominant influencer of our collective fortunes.”
I also expect materials and components availability to stabilise, and prices perhaps even to fall though I won’t hold my breath on that one. As we enter 2022 and throughout much of last year, price rises have taken place sometimes two or three weeks apart for the same product, wiping profits from jobs just priced. For commercial contracts especially, we have something of a ticking bomb in the background.
business been bursting that inevitably it will feel like a fall when it comes, probably from the spring of 2022.
And finally….
Although widely forecast for 2021 with the consequent surge in the share prices of airlines and leisure stocks, I have more confidence that with a substantially vaccinated population and ability to work around the bug, foreign holidays will take increasing chunks of what has been ‘our’ money for a year and a half, as will new motor cars as they become more widely available once again. Against this, working at home will continue to be the norm now that so many have had a taste and, even if offices are repopulated, it will never return to pre-covid. Thus, armed with that confidence and increasing formal acceptance of a home working hybrid by bosses, homeowners will continue to prepare their homes for rest, play and work. The tea leaves tell me that we will return to sales of around pre-pandemic levels KP, which were OK for me and mine, if not exactly eyewatering. What worries me about this however, is the question of whether so many firms out there will be too highly geared for the false highs created by pandemic, to ever come back down. Recovery loans will need to be repaid, as will finance for machinery, premises, vehicles and other investments made on the back of the sales surge, which has been sustained long enough for many to believe this is forever. We will, I believe, see a significant number of failures, dependent of course upon the level of decline in sales. I and many others have treated the sales boom as a surge that would inevitably come to an end; but for many, it has become the way of the world.
Many smaller firms built upon seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurialism, will have struggled to keep on top of the complexities of maintaining profitability against continuous prices rises. These will be amongst the most vulnerable, discovering all too late that, despite a bumper year of orders they haven’t made any money. Or are in loss. Of course, I hope that I am wrong on this. We are an industry that provides exceptional products for home improvers, every one of which is manufactured from scratch, with every detail potentially chosen by the customer and produced exactly to their specification. Those windows and doors and conservatories are then installed usually within a few short days, whatever the weather and conditions, with the vast majority of them absolutely perfect and with thousands of happy customers every week. Most even upmarket kitchens and bathrooms are produced using standard components that are adapted for each installation, not produced from scratch in the way that windows and doors are. And actually, compared to other home improvements we do it for very little money too. Ten grand will transform most average houses, both inside and out and with a profound impact on the security, comfort and energy bills of those properties. I think we do a bloody amazing job in this industry and, despite my concerns that some of us might find it tough later in the year, when I reflect how we have dealt with the unpredictable lows and highs of the past 20 months or so (well most of us anyway), I think we can be all be proud. On that note KP, may I wish you and the rest of our colleagues in this great industry of ours, a very prosperous, successful, fulfilling and Covid-reduced 2022. Now go for it!
* Danny Williams is managing director of Chelmsford based Pioneer Trading and has been involved with all aspects of the windows and doors industry for 35 years. His activities include manufacturing a full range of windows and doors in PVC-U and aluminium, an IGU facility, retailing and commercial contracting.
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January 2022 | www.glassnews.co.uk
