Yup, It's the Economy

OK, raise your hands if you predicted this economic downturn. Ford? Nope. GM? Nope. CitiBank? Nope. How about our companies? Did any of us begin making parts for Yaris's last year in a big way? How about Prius parts? Anyone? You mean you were counting on continuing to make a living on parts that fit vehicles that get 15 MPG? Oops. Big Mistake, huh? At least you're in heady company with some of the largest corporations in the world. It makes you wonder how Toyota and Honda were prescient enough to predict this.

Well, you've seen nothing yet and if your batting average on economic predictions has been low in the past, are you going to find some outside advice to help guide your company through this trough or are you going to continue to count on your own best guess? Maybe you're counting on taking more market share from your competitors in a market that's going to continue to shrink? Boy, that's not a position that I want to be in. It reminds me of fighting over crumbs.

Are people going to keep driving? Well, yeah, but a lot less and it doesn't much matter if they're driving 26 mpg cars or 15 mpg cars and trucks, they're just plain going to drive less and they're going to have less disposable income. They're going to be disposing their income on things like food and medicine and postage for sending out their resumes, cause there's going to be a bunch of people looking for new work.

Or maybe you're counting on this thing blowing over by next spring? Not going to happen and there are a lot of reasons why, which I'll enumerate in future posts.

There ARE options as long as you don't wait until you're running out of money to make those CNC machine payments or payroll. You have to act now and act decisively.

Do you cut costs or spend more money on marketing? There are a lot of variables and I'll try to outline some of them. Stay tuned.