It is good to be back - can you have too much Christmas? My Christmas socks fit and the new underpants could have done being one size more generous. Boris might have won his Covid bet - politics versus science. He took Scenario F and ran with it - well his luck was due to change. If he is right we are in for a pretty dicey January and then nothing but sunshine from February - so that will give the market a lift. So please form and orderlely queue and buy our tipping trailers.
On a less flippant note, supply side issues are still troublesome. As manufacturers solve one issue - say tyres - then the next one is revealed - say landing legs. Like restauranteurs price: 30% cost of food/ 30% labour/ 30% overhead - so to do manufacturers: 80% materials/ 20% labour. Clearly steel and aluminium World prices are important. They have risen dramatically and many of our suppliers are pricing purely by fear and guesswork - or not offering prices at all. Worst of all, some are pricing incorrectly and then changing them afterwards - ie retrospectively - now that sends panic up the chain into the dealer network. The dealer network (Newton et al) then act as a shock absorber until overwhelmed. The prices then get passed on. So it is entirely possible that there is another 5 to 10% price inflation yet to be revealed from January to June this year. My fear is that this will not be seen equally across the market and that will be the 'competition zone' for the year. Customers yelling at Dealers - and Dealers yelling at Manufacuturers. What about a bit of peace love and harmony?
And a small shout out to my one blog follower - Pieter - Jan a quote for you:
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Mark Twain.
Posted by Andrew on 04/01/2022
