It is hard out there at the moment. We have gone from a quiet period due to the election to another quiet period thanks to the seasonal summer holidays which has always been a slow period of the year for the fenestration sector.
My conversations with our own suppliers confirm to me that business activity is slow right now.
However, as we meander our way through what remains of the summer, a busier period may be around the corner.
Pre-Christmas rush
Yes, we’re talking about the C-word: Christmas. I know it is still August, and the cricket season hasn’t even finished yet. But we’re only a couple of weeks away from schools returning, and with almost metronomic precision, you can count on that to bring a return to better trading conditions.
You can almost time it to the day that when school returns, business does too. At least that is how I have felt about it during my time in this industry. And given how hard the year has been so far for the sector, I know that we will all be hoping for a bumper pre-Christmas rush to make up for some lost ground thanks to a torrid H1 of 2024.
What I am hoping to see is a build-up of delayed decision-making set free in early September. At the start of the Summer, we saw the General Election called. As is always the case, spending dropped significantly during that period as the public waited to see the outcome of the vote. As it was, it was a landslide for Labour and there was never going to be any danger of any other result. But the timing of the election was not useful. Even as the vote concluded, there was very little time for any post-election bounce as we entered the start of the summer school holidays.
What we could see is a good three months’ worth of spending decisions set free once daily life returns to normal. The last quarter nearly always sees a surge of people wanting to get their projects finished before the festive period and before Winter sets in. With regular summer spending disrupted more than normal, we could see a bigger rush in September, October and November than usual.
Tax and early 2025
More than just a morale boost, a better-than-usual pre-Christmas period will be more vital than ever for some businesses who have been struggling this year. January and February, when most tax bills require to be paid at the same time as the seasonal downturn, is the roughest period for companies going bust. A better-than-expected final quarter could make the difference between companies being able to survive into the New Year or not.
A quieter end to the year could make for another brutal opening to 2025, in a similar fashion to that of this year.
There is one major difference, however, and that is the hoped-building boom that Labour aims to bring in with 1.5m new homes over the next five years. If Labour can get things moving swiftly, and tackle the skills crisis which is the real barrier to making it happen, then our industry could experience a moderate uplift in business activity. It won’t be like the post-lockdown boom which crippled the supply chain a few years ago, but 300k homes per year means a lot more windows and doors and a housing market freed up to let people move more and spend more on home improvements.
But for now, enjoy what is left of summer, rest up and hit the back straight of the year like we mean business!
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