Supply Chain Connections

May 11 2009 8:32AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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By Glenn Singer

Recently we have seen some positive signs in the economy, the stock market and in the home building industry; however, I am not saying that the recession is over and that the home building industry has recovered. We still have a long way to go before that can be declared. One thing is for certain and that is that there will be a recovery and we need to prepare for it.

Now is the time to reflect on the past few years to identify the mistakes that we made as well as the things we did right. We also need to face the fact that it will be a long, long time before we will see 2,000,000 housing starts. In talking with many of our manufacturer associates, I have learned that they have been working hard to balance their builder-customer portfolios. They don’t want to be dependent on the top public builders and they want to sell privately-held local and regional builders as well.

The smart manufacturers have or are in the process of implementing share growth strategies now rather than wait for the turn around in the market. This makes sense since the builder sales cycle is such a long one and many realize that the time to take share is when the market is down.

So don’t wait, now is the time to be aggressive and implement your recovery plans.