HOW BAD IS THIS DOWNTURN

In true industry style, the picture of the true state of the market is deliberately murky. If you were to read just the PR, you’d think we’d barely changed from the heady days of 2020 and 2021. In private, however, the conversations are rather different and point to areas of the sector that could best be described as in distress. So how bad is this downturn really?

Public vs Private

The industry appears to have two different conversations with itself going on at the same time. In public, press releases and news articles paint a fairly pretty picture. “No recession here” is the main message you would pick up from them. All is good, nothing to see here. Yet in private, the conversation is very different. Over the past few weeks, I have had installers reach out to me expressing their concern about how quiet things are. Even fabricators, who are somewhat guarded when they talk to me (for obvious reasons) are unable to deny the fact that things really are going quiet out there.

You can see evidence of this playing out in real-time. Never have we seen the deluge of sales emails hitting our inboxes like we are at the moment. Even before the pandemic, I cannot remember seeing so many sales and promotional emails from suppliers trying to win new customers. It was not that long ago that manufacturers weren’t marketing altogether because of how busy everyone was and they were unable to take on any new clients. How things have changed.

On social media, the frequency of promotional tweets and Facebook posts have rocketed. Both installers and fabricators are going hard on the image-based posts to try to generate interest and create new leads.

There are other methods you can use to garner a feel for things. If you look at The Gazette and search for terms such as “windows” or “glazing”, you will find the rate at which fenestration and construction-based companies fall into liquidation going up. Indeed, looking at the wider economy, there are predictions of around 600,000 small businesses closing this year due to the various ongoing pressures within the economy.

This contrast between the outward-facing image and private conversations has always existed. No major supplier is going to admit out loud that things are going south. That creates further doubt and worry in what is already becoming a stressful time. It does become slightly bizarre however when reality grinds against it.

Understanding the bigger picture

During times such as these, it’s natural to want to compare what is going on now to previous months or years. It gives us a greater understanding of where we’re headed as a sector and what the current state of play might be.