The beginning of the year for us is often slow and like many, we begin to long for summer. This year is no different as the last couple months have dragged on with limited work and not much in the pipeline. When business was booming, before the economy took one on the chin, we would have quotes and contracts set for the first sign of spring.This has not happened for the last three years or longer and from what I have been hearing and what has happened here, it hasn't changed this year either. The lack of clarity for future work for a micro-business such as ours is scary because budgets are extremely tight, credit is non-existent and prices are starting to rise. As everyone knows, gas is up and for the first time in roughly three years our metal prices have started to tick upwards.
The bottom line is, if we get a cool summer and air conditioning season is non-existent, we could see another rough year. The end of last year was very strong and actually made up the difference to the slow beginning of the year. It would be nice to see a steady summer customer flow and the same strong end to 2011 like we had in 2010. Time will tell because for every good thing I hear about how business is in town, I seem to hear something that contrasts those sentiments. It seems that no one knows what is going on and their business is just as day to day as ours. We can't predict the future and I don't want to try, but back in 2006 when we had the signed or verbal contract in February for start in April or May, it sure seemed like we knew what the future held.
