economy
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
Last month, I jumped into the New Year with a discussion of how the trends we face these days are influencing our recent experiences in business, society and life in general. In doing so, we navigated our through a mixed bag of factors - advancing technology, interesting economic times and complex legal conditions on the grand scale up alongside local, narrower issues having to do with the emergence of the watershaping business, the wayward nature of trade associations and the state of relevant education for our trades. All that was intended to set up this column's discussion of where we, as the watershaping industry, might be going in the months and years to come. Pure prognostication, however, is an imperfect process in which I won't indulge. Rather than get into the aimless game of offering predictions, I'll delve instead into
I've been paying attention to what goes on in this industry for a long time, and I'd have to say that these times are better than any I've ever witnessed. And it's not just me: I talk all the time with people all over the country, and it's probably not going out on much of a limb to say that most of us are having the best times we've ever had. Everywhere you look, people are pressing as hard as they can to keep up with the demands being placed on them. And it's true even in
