downturn
Before I write my end-of-year blogs, it's generally been my habit to take a look at my last year-ending thoughts to get a sense of how on (or off) target I was and figure out what I need to do to refine my prognostications for the current version. For the most part, I usually don't find anything dramatic, but this year was
There's no doubt that watershaping took it on the chin in the Great Recession. Some businesses vanished, and those that have persisted are, in many if not most cases, leaner than they were back in 2008 and just different in many respects from what they once were. It's also fair to report, because the economy and
We knew it had to happen. After several years of superheated growth, some sectors of the watershaping market are now slowing down - in some areas, dramatically so. In my travels and through dozens of conversations with watershapers and their suppliers during the past several months, I've been hearing consistently that the volume-oriented, price-driven end of the market has been hit particularly hard - off somewhere between 30 and 60 percent in some areas. That's a big number no matter which end of the spectrum is closer to the truth. It represents an enormous change from the extreme demand that most all of us were experiencing just a year ago. So now, a great many firms that were
We knew it had to happen. After several years of superheated growth, some sectors of the watershaping market are now slowing down - in some areas, dramatically so. In my travels and through dozens of conversations with watershapers and their suppliers during the past several months, I've been hearing consistently that the volume-oriented, price-driven end of the market has been hit particularly hard - off somewhere between 30 and 60 percent in some areas. That's a big number no matter which end of the spectrum is closer to the truth. It represents an enormous change from the extreme demand that most all of us were experiencing just a year ago. So now, a great many firms that were
