It’s Not the Economy’s Fault

When people are getting laid off left and right, sales slow down, customers stop coming, stores start closing, people blame the economy.  We’re in a recession, depression, the sky is falling.

We always get asked by vendors and customers if this so-called recession has affected our business.   I’d say it’s yes and no.  As far as sales are concerned and demand for our products, no, it has not gone down.  It has actually increased.  If the recent trade show we exhibited at is any indication of demand for our products, it has grown by at least 50% from last year, which was twice as big as the year prior.  But as far as operations, it has affected us big time.  It’s harder to do business because creditors are getting tighter and suppliers aren’t willing to offer the same terms.  We had to learn really quickly to operate on cash instead of credit.   Employees are getting laid off at factories that make materials for our products and in turn affect the quality and timeliness that we get our materials and products.  We’ve seen a few wholesale customers close for business, but we’re still constantly adding more retailers.  We’re still “business as usual” around here.  I’m still developing new products, trying to improve our current line, trying to find better ways to help make our operations more efficient.  We’ve not cut back on advertising–we’ve not really done much advertising to begin with anyway.   But we’ve got A LOT of things in the pipeline that we’re working on.

It’s such a joy to come across vendors, suppliers and customers who don’t believe in what the media has been bombarding us with since last year.  These are companies that are also still operating business as usual.  They’re still around for a reason.

I think the most volatile businesses are those that just thrive on when the going is easy and customers are aplenty.  They’re the ones that don’t offer anything really extraordinary that you can easily do without them in a pinch.  These are the stores that survive on selling green circle widgets because it’s the IN thing to do.  When people start looking for blue square widgets and they have a stock room full of green circle ones, they either fold up or learn to deal with the situation by either stocking up on the blue square widgets, making the old green circle widgets look “retro”, or finding the red triangle widgets before everybody else does.  Now if you are a widget manufacturer, and there are a hundred others like you that make the same thing, unless you can make widgets better, faster, or are easier to deal with, chances are that your business has slowed down as well.  If you’re an employee, unless you’re really contributing something to the company that nobody else can do, your job is just as volatile.  Gone are the days when all you have to do is show up and do as you’re told.  Now you have to show up early, not only do as you’re told, but either ask or volunteer to do more –without asking for a raise.

Now isn’t the time to be just doing what everyone else is doing.  Now’s the time to be more innovative than ever.  Now’s the time to prove what you’re really worth.  If you, your job or business gets run over or kicked off over to the side, it’s not the economy’s fault.  It’s because you haven’t done anything to stop traffic.