Custom Installer Roundtable

\"Installers have adopted multiple survival strategies, including a focus on retrofits, diversification into light commercial, adding lighting controls, taking on smaller jobs, networking with architects and real-estate agents, and mining prospects from opened building permits and existing housing sales. Many installers have gone out of business.\" Call me crazy, but aren\'t those strategies that a good business should always be using? Putting all of one\'s eggs in one basket is never healthy, but neither is trying to everything to everybody. In my last years wearing an integrator\'s hat, we consciously tried to do many of those things in order to not just survive, but thrive in an economy much better than it is now. Hopefully many of the industry\'s better integrators will now take that advice to heart rather than simply crying, \"The sky is falling!\" like Chicken Little. When times are tough it is indeed a time to try new ventures that make sense, but it is more a time to decide who you really are, to focus on that niche and becoming the best in town at what you do, and then letting people know that you are. For the past several years I\'ve been preaching to dealers to diversify into light commercial, to do more lighting and control, to look at more retro and remodel business, and to network with other trades and resources to grow their customer base. Let\'s hope that there are lots of folks out there who are listening to this and willing to work hard at getting better. If we focus on our strengths we will all be stronger when the pendulum swings back, as it always does.

"Installers have adopted multiple survival strategies, including a focus on retrofits, diversification into light commercial, adding lighting controls, taking on smaller jobs, networking with architects and real-estate agents, and mining prospects from opened building permits and existing housing sales. Many installers have gone out of business."

Call me crazy, but aren't those strategies that a good business should always be using? Putting all of one's eggs in one basket is never healthy, but neither is trying to everything to everybody.

In my last years wearing an integrator's hat, we consciously tried to do many of those things in order to not just survive, but thrive in an economy much better than it is now. Hopefully many of the industry's better integrators will now take that advice to heart rather than simply crying, "The sky is falling!" like Chicken Little. When times are tough it is indeed a time to try new ventures that make sense, but it is more a time to decide who you really are, to focus on that niche and becoming the best in town at what you do, and then letting people know that you are.

For the past several years I've been preaching to dealers to diversify into light commercial, to do more lighting and control, to look at more retro and remodel business, and to network with other trades and resources to grow their customer base. Let's hope that there are lots of folks out there who are listening to this and willing to work hard at getting better. If we focus on our strengths we will all be stronger when the pendulum swings back, as it always does.