4.12.08

Recession, there, I said it, and I am sure if you are still reading, you were quite able to handle it. So we are in a recession, and like every other period in history we will eventually be out of a recession.  It’ll be really tough for a lot of people –  loosing jobs, loosing homes, and to a lesser extent not taking the exotic vacation, putting off the kitchen remodel project.  But there is another side to this.  Maybe it will make us tighten up and spend more responsibly, consume more responsibly, help out our neighbors more.  

Our business has felt the effects of the economic downturn.  The dropping dollar has increased our costs by 20-25% and we are doing our best to eat those increases rather than pass them on.  While it hasn’t really affected the high end of the market,  as you go down the ladder, the more careful people's buying becomes.  Tight economic times have certainly made us take a good hard look at how we handle inventory, how we handle things that have been in our stock too long.  It was in part the inspiration behind our new “going, going, gone” link (Emily’s very good idea) – quit holding on to old merchandise to make our margins and move it along.  That in turn took care of a number of issues: cash flow in slow times so we could keep working on new products, it gets inexpensive stuff for our clients who need immediate inventory for their shops without having to spend a lot of money, inexpensive items for our retail clients, it generated traffic to our web site, and it cleared out old merchandise. All of this even helped insipire us to find new material here in the States which not only saves us months in shipping time, but also saves us money not having to exchange dollars to foreign currencies – but more about that later.

Now I am at the High Point Furniture Show.  The first day started out absolutely dead.  To the point where the literally three or four people at a time in the aisle were asking what’s going on (the answer seemed pretty obvious to me).  But by the end of the day we had had one of our best days ever.  The next day was the same, as was the third, so at this point it’s been a really good market for us.  Now there are certainly not many people in the halls, but those that are here are buying.  But they are buying cautiously which makes sense to me.  I don’t really know where I am going with this blog, but I guess my point is that personally I am a big fan of acknowledging problems at hand such as the economy and business struggles, dealing with them, reacting to them and getting on with it - rather than sweeping problems under the rug and hoping the lump that it makes will go away if we just ignore it.

So this show we brought in more of our organic wood pieces like the consoles and tables, as well as more unusual little side tables like the converted sugar grinders and farm tillers.  But the really exciting thing for me was the reaction to and orders from the pieces we are producing ourselves.  The big burl coffee table, consoles, side tables and benches that we had produced in our own little workshop in Minneapolis – again all out of reclaimed wood, and all with a much faster turn around as the material is coming from locations here in the States.  This new part of our collection is really exciting for me personally – to be able to make the pieces ourselves, to work on prototypes right there in our workshop in Minneapolis, to have the ability to make custom sized pieces for clients, have lead times cut in half for these products, to not have to stay up ‘till 12am to call a vendor to find out what’s going on, to pay in dollars.  Now of course we are still sourcing all over the world which is still my favorite thing to do, but this facet of the business is a lot of fun, so I am obviously quite excited about it.

The show ended with me about to leave to catch my flight home,  looking forward to getting home and seeing my wife - who had been over seas giving a lecture at a medical device meeting - and my son, when a fellow vendor walked by, a guy I have seen around for a number of shows.  We had never exchanged words before, just the simple nod of hello.  But this time he stopped and took the time to say "I hope you had a really good show, because your things are great, and I wanted you to know, so I really hope you had a good show," and then he was on his way.  Now we get nice comments about our booth, and they are always greatfully accepted because a lot of time and energy goes into what we do, but for what ever reason, whether it was this guy's tone of voice, his sincerely wanting us to have had a good show (there really wasn't much traffic, especially these last few days so no one is ever sure how any one else has done), that I was really touched by his compliments that he really hoped we had done well because he truly appreciated what we were doing.  A nice way to end things.

Ultimately here at the end of the show, we have had a good show, not our best, but ranking up there, and even though there will certainly be some tight times – clients putting off ordering for a while, things like that, it seems that things will keep rolling along.  As long as we keep coming up with relevant and practical things that people need at good prices, I feel quite confident.

Recession – there, I said it again.