Advice for hard times: Get up and go to work
By Michael Knell, Canadian correspondent -- Furniture Today, June 15, 2008
It's time to get up and go to work.…
Business is tough. It's tough for everyone throughout the supply chain, from manufacturers and importers to retail, both big box and independent. And there's nothing on the horizon to suggest that this is going to change anytime soon.
This has become my stock reply whenever someone asks me to forecast industry performance over the coming months. I'm asked almost every day, sometimes several times.
Statistically, I'm on pretty safe ground. According to Harris Decima, the Winnipeg, Manitoba-based polling firm, Canadian consumer confidence has ebbed to its lowest point since September 2001, which is in keeping with the trends seen in the United States.
Harris noted that consumers are less likely to make a major purchase — this includes furniture, mattresses and other big ticket home goods — than at any time in the past five years. The number of people saying now is a bad time to make a major purchase has doubled since last fall.
Chiming in with an even more pessimistic appraisal was the Conference Board of Canada, whose consumer confidence index is at a 16-year low. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada has been reporting steady sales declines by furniture stores every month for the past 18 months or so.
Having been asked my assessment, the question that follows is, “Well, what should we do?” I've got a stock answer for that, too. “Get up and go to work every day. What else is there to do?”
While today's economic news might be bleak, there are a lot of people laying the groundwork for growth when the consumer gets her groove back. Take a look at some of the forward-thinking product initiatives by Brentwood Classics, for example. West Bros. is doing great things on the environmental front. And others are also getting imaginative.
On the retail side, the buying groups are working overtime to find new ways to help retailers. “It's a fact that good retailers will survive in bad times but great retailers will thrive in bad times,” former Mega Group president and CEO Michael Graydon said during his farewell address at the Mega conference last month. He's absolutely right.
What disappointed me about the conference was that while it was one of the biggest ever, still only about half of Mega's shareholders were present. This was a great learning opportunity and when times are tough, learning is a critical element of working.
There are sources of inspiration and ideas out there. Go find them. Exploit them. We've been through this before. We beat it then. We'll beat it this time. We just have to get up every day and go to work.
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