Everything old is new again
So, in the waning days of our Summer of Discontent we seek answers to our questions. Questions that have, for the moment, escaped us. Like:
- If our current customers are "challenged", then where are the new ones?
- How do we replace entire market categories (pharma, financial services, etc.)? CAN we?
- What is our near-term forecast for business? Is a 4th Quarter Rally in the cards?
We found casinos about 3-4 years ago. Since then, they've become the Crack Cocaine that replaced the previous controlled substance, the Meeting/Event business. And THAT replaced the point-based incentive form of heroin.
Let's face it--we're always addicted to something. And kicking the addiction to the business that Big Pharma gave us will be challenging indeed. Some suppliers in the promotional products space will not have a successful rehab. And the financial services segment is on Life Support for the forseesable future.
Brands see the promotional products distributor as the potential Next Big Thing, but to quote Counting Crows--"it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls". Sifting through 17,000 entities to find the ones that will make our future is no easy task. But they're there, and will remain there. They will survive any cataclysm the market suffers, because they have relationships with people who buy stuff.
About that 4th Quarter Rally--my view is that the jury's out. For every piece of encouraging economic news, there's a counterbalancing piece of bad news. Unemployment remains almost 10%, and there's a lot of talk about Double-Dipping. None of this bodes well for our market.
But quoting activity is up, and there seems to be a sense of optimism, or at least a sense that we might be at the bottom. I'm reminded of Blazing Saddles, where Clevon Little and his friend are in quicksand. The friend panics, but Clevon says "my foot's on the rail"--a sign that they've probably gone as far down as they're going to go.
I think MY foot's on the rail as well. How quickly we get out of the quicksand is the unknown. And to paraphrase Slim Pickens "we don't want to lose a $20 handcar"...
Pete
posted by Pete Mitchell at 11:44 AM
1 Comments:
I have a friend who teaches seminars on starting small businesses, and he says there is a simple rule of thumb for successful business: in a drought, you sell water....in a flood, you sell boats....in a plague, you sell coffins.
Are we trying to sell the wrong stuff to the right audience? Or are we looking for a new audience to whom we can sell our traditional stuff?
For many of our traditional customers who are struggling financially, still have more employees than they need and don't have to spend money to retain or attract employees, it must seem like we're selling sand in a drought.
As you point out, we may have run out of new audiences....so we might just have to figure out what our traditional "potential customers" need and sell that, or repackage what we have into something that they DO need. Let's hope it's not coffins.
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