I have been dealing with a few different trade vendors over the last several weeks as we are doing some things out of our core finish work for a great client that just wanted us to handle it for them. We are happy to do that for them as they really were a great client when we did a cosmetic upgrade for their interior of their newly purchased home. Anyway since I have been talking to other trade guys it has become extremely obvious that we are all in this economic slump together.

When talking to all of them they are dealing with the downturn in different ways. Everyone has downsized that goes without saying, although I just said it. But what is interesting to me is how understanding everyone is when it comes to price and budgets. All of us in the trades are being asked to provide our services cheaper than we would have last year and especially two years ago. And as far as I can tell most everyone is working on smaller profit margins, I know we are.  But the part that is interesting to me is that when the talk about price a budgets come up people seem to be more comfortable talking about what they can and cannot do a job for. My theory behind this is people have “had” to look at their actual costs very closely so they actually do know exactly what it takes to complete a job. Again I know we have become better at every person knowing what a job has been budgeted for thus we have been better at meeting those budgets.  I also have seen a more focused approach from the trade vendors on what “exactly” is needed and what is not to complete the project.

In the past they had more margin to play with thus they didn’t worry about the small things.. not so much now. But the intriguing part for me is just having the ability to opening (at least is seems more open) talk about the price or budget on a job. I like this approach better since we are always open to talk about our costs when general contractors contact us for favors, etc. It seems like there is more of a feeling we are all in this together so lets just figure out how to make it work for all of us. A novel approach but one that is not normally adhered to on the larger projects. That is my 2 cents on the current atmosphere of the trades. Have an amazing day.

Tags: trade viewpoints