The Framers Forum

I'm just wondering what people are expecting things to be like after the shut down ends and we can open our businesses again. For my self, I'm not expecting everything to carry on just like nothing has happened. I expect lots of things to have changed. Getting people to spend like they used to might take a while, so prices may be a difficult thing for some people. Spending habits may be very different and essentials may be a bigger focus for many and non essentials like framing may be a lot lower on the list of priorities than before. Will businesses adopt different ways of attracting business, will business models have to change to suit different trading conditions.

It's very difficult to know what to expect. How many of us prosper, will more than likely depend upon many different outcomes that may change the dynamics of our local business environments. Most of my customer base is from older members of the population and this includes people from the age groups, which are supposed to be more vunerable to this current virus pandemic. As you get older, the desire to change and do things differently, might not be something that you are all that willing to do. As the saying goes, you can't teach an old dog, new tricks. Well, perhaps some of us don't see why we should want to change too much at this stage in our lives. Whetever happens, I'm not thinking that everything is going to stay the same.

I'm already facing big changes after life changing things related to having had a stroke. My level of mobility is not the same and my once nimble fingers are not as they once where and after learning new was of doing things and using different tools to enable me to still be able to do the same things, I am now having to think about more potential changes to continue trading after the current shut down. Not everyone is going to have some sort of ongoing thoughts about being ready, some will just wait and worry about it all at a later point in time. Well whatever is going to happen is just around the corner and formulating a few ideas now may well be easier now, than waiting until everyone is getting into headless chicken mode and having trouble thinking clearly developing the right ideas when they need them.

How many people will be all jumping on the same band wagon and all trying to do the same things and chasing and inadequate level of available business demand, for what they are doing. Probably too many! Whether you like it,or not, everybody is talking about a bad recession coming as a result of this pandemic. Being someone who provides to much stuff that everyone else is also doing and too many of these people are willing to cut prices to the bone, is probably not the best business model.

It takes time to think about ideas for things that will attract some of the customers who are not looking for the very cheapest prices and starting thinking up the right ideas and strategy now, will hopefully give you a helpful head start on the rest of the crowd. Lots of people will be thinking about what they can make to sell, if you can make things which are not easy to copy, this will help you. Skillful craftsmanship is not something that most of these also ran's won't have time to develop. If you have the edge over many other people because your craftmanship is giving you the edge, then quality craftsmanship should be your market.