how is your bussiness doing

clammy

I know how my bussiness has been effected and it's long term effets on myself  but i am wondering how others are being effected and if they have made adjustments in there pricing and how they are doing there jobs to keep working or are you carrying on as usually .in my area it has been very hard pricing between contrators has wide spreads  as always and there is definetly not as much in the work in the  residental and commerial sectors. we have even seen 1 large supply house chain close it doors ompletly while a few others have been globbed up by a large inpersonal chain which i do not deal with while i see one small supply house putting money back into there bussiness by building a moble boiler dispaly trailer with all boiler being operational (oil,gas ,steam mod con and combo systems w/solar intergration) thanks peace and good luck clammy

eluv8

I hear ya

Definitely tough times, I had my own company for 8 years and decided a couple of years ago to close the doors and move on to bigger  and brighter things. Now currently unemployed after being underemployed I am starting to wish I had kept the doors open and paved my own future.



Contractors are doing the same here in Utah, we have the big mechanical contractors with overhead and then we have these little mom and pops that work out of their home and have no overhead quoting the same jobs, in addition to the guys who are used to doing small residential projects that are now trying to compete in the large scale homes or commercial projects that they have no experience quoting.



There are so many opportunities for contractors right now to expand their businesses. Unfortunately at the same time there is much, much less work to go around.



Service plumbing seems to be going great, all those cheap and poorly installed jobs during the housing boom are beginning to fail.





I am seriously considering going back to school to get an engineering degree.

In the meantime I am moving back to Arizona and if the job hunt does not work out will probably get back into contracting again and or service plumbing.

Mad Dog_2

Hey clammy....this is NOT the same business

it was last year around May.   Things have been turned upside down and EVERYONE I know has had to cut overhead and downsize to survive.   I know many larger companies are on a short work week and furloughs.  I had to trim my crew.   On the upside, I don't have as much stress and have more hands on control again.  Thank God for the strong and loyal customer base that I had built over the years.  I would NOT want to be starting a business in this economy.  As you said, atleast IIIIIIIII!!!!!! am in control of my own destiny and not being layed off or furloughed.  Hang in there you'll.  Mad Dog

CMadatMe

Changes in the marketplace

This is a real good thread and hope to read many more posts. For me from the wholesale side last year I finished ahead of 2008 and 2010 while a little sluggish looks like we will finish ahead of 2009. A couple of reasons. Just like contractors, wholesalers need to reinvent themselves in order to increase sales. As I saw the market start to dip I was fortunate that the previous year we purchased another wholesaler that happened to have an electrical division so I decided to expand into the electrical business.



I figured heck couldn't hurt. Already have the inventory within our company might as well use it. Every plumbing and heating contractor I know dabbles into a little electrical and knows an electrican so I did. It's picked up some of the slack in the plumbing sales and I was able to hire a guy from an electrical wholesaler that also had some plumbing and heating experience so it's been a fun learning experience for me.



The other focus change was high efficiency. I sold more mod/cons last year and into this year than traditional atmospherics and same on the oil more 3-pass than traditional pin-style. The other big player is that I decided to stick and play with a line that nobody else has in stock around me. I let the other wholesalers play the margin game with the Triangles, Purfires, Alpine and GB's and fight each other while I sell my Viessmann and help my contractors grow their business through education and offering them products that they enjoy selling against the others. They like challenge of actually being able to sell a product on its self instead of only having to be the cheapiest guy.



Supporting the local trade and educating them has also lead to more quality sales not just for us but for them. I formed my own local trade organization this year. It is a recognized trade association in the State of NY and we are an EnergyStar partner, really all legal. We meet once a month for a meeting with a technical class. We are in the process of getting ready to unleash our web site to the communities within our marketplace and hope to start a print marketing campaign in Sept. The goal is to get consumers to visit our site, find information, ask questions and look for our contractors as the guys to call when it comes to high efficiency heating. We also hooked up with our Counties website that is dedicated to educating local homeowners on how and where to find federal tax credit, local utility and state rebates. So as we move into heating season I hope to see my guys prosper and see no reason why they won't. 



A general manager I had back in the early 90's used to preach, "This business is built on relationships and helping your customer grow. If you help him grow you grow and you have a friend."

clammy

Quite slow

thanks for your input and positive attitude especially you matt you always seem to  get to the point and put a positive spin on things thanks ,as for myself the winter was not good lost a few customers and got rid of a few also and basically had alot of tire kickers who where only looking at the price point .As for the summer theres been a little bit of service but not like years past thanks to the local utilities .Usually by this time of year we have at least a few overhead a/c jobs under our belt but not one this summer yet .If it where not for a few commerical accounts that do alot of r and d and always need equipment set up i would be dead in the water .I am already sending out feelers and may pack it in and get back into on site building maintenance stationary engineering side of the business at this point it would at least be a steady paycheck and bennies there's only so much fishing one can do and i may not have caught my limit but i believe that i have reach my limit and what i can do being the way things are and some times ya need a change when it comes to what ya do and i have been in this line of workin the field working for over 25 years and i think it may be time for a change to a bit easier ride being none of it getting easier espeacially if you want to at the least make a decent living .Peace and good luck clammy

Mad Dog_2

Wouldn't blame you, Clammy

Its a rough row on the contracting side.   Think long and hard before you pack it in though.  We all know the stories.  Just be careful and hang in there.  Mad Dog

Unknown

Hang-in there clammy,,,

Its a very depressing year on my side of the river too!

Last year was good,,, this year,, terrible!

People here only look at the bottom-line price, no inspections from utilities, no "officials" to check for proper licensing, and absolutely NO customer loyalty.

First to answer the phone, gets the call,,, then be "nickel & dimed"  when we get there!



I feel your pain. :-0

tim smith

Mad Dog, Clammy etc. etc Business update

Interesting this came up, Mad dog and I were emailing a little back and forth yesterday about this very thing. This market has made everybody wake up. People were riding on a easy street train for many years. I don't mean this in a bad way but it was just the way it was. There was soooo much funny money out there. People were spending money like mad and work basically fell into there laps. Why many did not think that this would happen is surprising to me. This will make much better business people come out of this. You have to be creative, keep pricing realistic to meet the needs of every day people. This is a very competitive market place now, I feel you have to show your best side, best price and value to the customer. There is still a profit to be made but it is tighter. Trim down all the expenses you can that are not necessary, do you need that fancy truck? not really. Is your team at it's peak efficiency or do you need to invest time/money into them to help them see a better way for all of us to get more work and stay competitive in this market. I find this to be a challenge and feel we have taken some good steps to being as efficient as possible. We still have a long way to go but its kinda been fun in a somewhat masochistic way. We did not have to lay off and I feel very lucky for this. We also never grew too much in employees over the last 5 yrs but we still maintained a healthy growth. So I guess in a long winded way I am just saying you can turn this into a positive learning experience and find a way to make this work for you. I think Mad dog is doing just that.  Good luck all, Tim

MJS

A little more difficult

Been in business for 30 years. Mostly new construction with one full time serviceman. Service is steady, new construction is spotty. A few very loyal contractors we work for happen to have some work right now. If it wasn't for them, we would be "hurtin' for certain". Other, lesser contractors have some work also, but are looking for the lowest of the low bids and are finding just that. Lots of hungry plumbers willing to work for nothing or even less. The future looks bright, just a little different from what we've been used to.