I wish to thank all of you who have visited this blog and read and or commented on the topical issues of the day. I will continue in 2010 to bring you my thoughts on what is happening in the political and public sectors that will deeply effect what we do in the private sector.
Just this past year we have faced some of the most challenging times we have seen in the past 50 years. The potential damage that could be inflicted on the American public is substantial and I will continue to highlight those policies which I see as the most damaging to the private sector.
Currently the Health Bill is on the top of the list as the potentially most damaging legislation pending to the American Public. Second on the list is the Cap and Trade Scheme. This is the second most far reaching legislation every to pass the House of Represenatatives, but fortunately the Senate has basically killed the bill and this piece of poor legislation should die an early death next year. If this bill passed every product sold in America will immediately have a price increase and your energy costs will go up significantly as well as a massive tax increase.
Next year is a congressional voting year. Hopefully enough of the independants have now seen what it means to have a Democrat President and Democratic Controlled Congress and realize this is not in the best interests of the country.
Only time will tell…Happy New Year and Keep the comments coming.
Greg Wiener
Owner, Quickscrews International
Now that 2009 is winding down, we must reflect on what went good in 2009 and what we expect to accomplish in 2010. Unfortunately the good was more or less related to surviving the fall of the US economy at the end of 2008 and the severe recession that as lingered on.
Quickscrews made all the tough moves it had to in January of 2009. That meant layoffs of approximately 35% of our workforce and restructuring of all management employees salaries and compensation benefits. This was very painful but necessary for the health of the company. On a positive note , we have emerged as a much leaner company. By streamlining, we can concentrate on growing our business in a more productive and profitable way without being beholden to the banks or the government.
We will launch our long awaited Retail Site in the next two weeks or so. This will give access to Internet end users who wish to buy any of our 2,300 different products. We hope to expand into different markets such as fasteners and accessories for Solar Installation. We will begin a move into other construction related supply houses such as Stucco, Drywall, Plumbing and Electrical distributors to stock and sell our expanding line of Drive Bit and Nut Setter Accessory line.
We further expect to introduce a next generation fastener which we have been working on for approximately 2 years. This launch will be announced in a global e-mail approximately 2 weeks before the new product arrives.
Thank you for your loyalty in 2009 and we will continue to strive for the best outcomes for all of our potential customers.
Greg Wiener
Owner, Quickscrews International Corp.
As I watched this past weekend and saw the House of Representatives pass what appears to me as the most dangerous and intrusive legislation to ever have been voted on in America. Why do I think it is dangerous? Simple it attacks the very premise this country was founded on. You might ask how? This country was founded on man’s ability to strive for excellence, the freedom to push ideas to market and prosper from those ideas. The beliefs that success for one benefits all, the belief that liberty and property rights are inalienable. Many free market individuals believe we should promote and reward success. The free enterprise and capitalistic system insures that success is rewarded and failure is punished, yet done so equally and without prejudice; unless of course there is outside interference, for example our government.
Once the government begins picking winners and losers in the free market, the free market itself is at great risk. Individual liberties and freedoms can rise or fall on this interference. More importantly it is not the role of government to interfere with the free market; it is the role of government to promote and regulate the free market.
We have seen how massive government intervention has worked before. Huge entitlements like Medicare and Social Security will be either bankrupt or completely insolvent by 2030. Amtrak is billions of dollars in the red and the post office is all but insolvent. (more…)
It is apparent to me that: the current path for Quickscrews is heading in the right direction. We have spent the better part of a year now re-organizing ourselves and coming out leaner and stronger. Unfortunately the rest of the economy is still lagging far behind and it doesn’t seem apparent much will change next year.
Quickscrews will be exhibiting all of our outstanding products next week at the National Industrial Fastener Show at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Booth 1030. Please come by and view the wide variety of products (over 2,000 different SKU’s).
Change for Quickscrews is defined differently. First we look at where we have been for the past 22 years and wonder where can we grow? Where can we expand? Those questions seem easy, yet in a severe recession these are no small tasks. So lets begin with where to grow. We feel very strongly that more growth can come from expanding our customer base to include a variety of industries which we typically have not penetrated for one reason or another. Our outstanding line of Drive Bits and Nut setters will be marketed to a whole new set of potential Quickscrews customers. This product line has had continual growth for 8 years now. We must expand our customer base to continue to fuel growth in new markets. We must aggressively pursue growth within our customer base and ask ourselves what else can we be doing? Today we must be lean and effective for if not we will not continue to grow. Many business people have uttered the phrase Grow or Die and in today’s environment that may be closer to the truth than has been in a very long time.
Greg Wiener
Owner
Quickscrews International Corp.
Last week I spent 5 days traveling from Northern Virginia down to South Carolina. I was visiting potential and existing customers. While in the middle of this trip I was watching the news only to find out that I was being told the recession was technically over.
Now typically I would rejoice in such an announcement, unfortunately in this situation, I simply could not believe it. This was in direct conflict to what I was personally seeing and learning. Our industry is generally a leading indicator in what is occurring in the housing market and according to what I saw we are nowhere near coming out of this recession. Major manufacturer’s and distributors businesses are significantly down from the previous year and sales are still declining or at best flattening out. There were significant large industrial complexes completely empty of businesses and massive signs saying: Lease Available.
The businesses I visited all claimed a reduction in sales anywhere from 25-45%. The majority of the companies all expect 2010 to be soft at best and more likely continuing decreases in revenues are inevitable before a rebound will occur. They look at the housing start numbers, same as I do and realize that the foreclosure problem is still a tremendous drag on the home building industry and will continue to prevent new tract home building until the cycle number is below 4 months inventory. We still stand at a record high of about 9 months inventory and no large home builder wants to compete with foreclosed priced homes.
So, I ask again, is the recession really over?
As we continue to battle the forces of the economy, we are finding areas where we have opportunity to grow. We are constantly getting inquiries from this site and our experienced sales staff is actively contacting potential and existing customers throughout the United States.
We are expanding our accessory line of drive bits and bit holders so we can expand our market base. We are looking at introducing the next generation of quality woodworking fasteners with improvements that will provide users the ability to eliminate all pre-drilling in any wood materials. We will expand our website to include retail online purchasing. The goals of our company has remained constant for over 20 years, provide excellent quality and service and the rest will come.
For years we have worked with good people all over this country and we will continue to be there to establish a relationship with all of you. Our expertise is anchored by long term experience (Collectively over 100 years knowledge of the woodworking industry), ongoing training and education of the products developed; used and re-used in the manufacturing of cabinets and wood furniture.
When you call our company at 800-743-6916 we are ready to offer solutions to your wood fastening problems. We currently stock over 99% of the fasteners commonly used to build a standard kitchen cabinet. We have the ability to ship same day orders anywhere in the country and we stock everything we sell in two warehouses conveniently located on both East and West coasts.
We know the next 12-15 months will be a challenge and we at Quickscrews are ready to answer the bell.
Submitted By,
Greg Wiener
Owner , Quickscrews International Corp.
As expected the turnout was extremely low this year. With many large companies in our industry opting out, the remaining vendors took their best shot at communicating with the customers who did visit the show. Early attendance numbers were given to the exhibitors and we knew that attendance would be significantly off this year.
   We decided to downsize our booth and are extremely happy about that decision. We were very satisified to have significantly more and better quality discussions with the attendees which allowed us to spend more time with each potential customer.
As usual there were many discussions amongst exhibitors as to whether or not Vegas is the best place for a show during a recession. This is a fair question. When speaking with multiple vendors/exhibitors we all agreed that having the show in a major metropolitan area/city in a down year would be worth having the AWFS Board look into.
I spoke with Rick Calvert of AWFS and the show is not yet booked for 2011 in Vegas and if enough of us go out and request or demand a change, maybe we can get it. Vegas is great for a good time, but with little or no manufacturing in the area, compared to Los Angeles where we may get 5-10,000 cabinet manufacturers to attend a local show; Vegas does not seem to be the best place during a recession.
We just finished our Fiscal year in June and we close a significantly difficult time in our history. We can look forward to our future and we realize that leaner and meaner is better than bigger and gone!
We thank all of you who have supported us and will continue to do so in the future.
Submitted By,
Greg Wiener
Owner
Quickscrews International Corp.
As we enter the final stretch of our 21st year in business , I wish to discuss where we are heading and how we view the immediate and long term future of our industry. For those of you who do not know our history, I will give you the abbreviated version.
I started this company in my garage on July 20th, 1987. I started out as a local distributor of a wide variety of miscellaneous supplies to the cabinet and furniture trades in the Northern California Bay Area market. This market had a radius of approximately 90 miles. After a few years it became obvious to me that there indeed was a need for someone to specialize in fasteners for wood and I decided it would be us. We then embarked on a long campaign to have the Cabinet industry recognize us as the leader in innovative Wood fastening technology. In 2004, we grew to become the single largest privately held company in our field. In the past 5 years we have sold over 7 billion screws nationwide. We are still the largest privately held company in our niche.
Our customers include distributors, resellers , catalog companies and manufacturer’s. The only market we have yet to penetrate is the internet retail world. We will venture into this market soon by launching an internet retail website in the next few months. We wish to offer the Quickscrews product line to users who have never had the opportunity to purchase. There are those buyers out there who are only going to search the internet and want to buy the best and are willing to pay for it. Those are the customers who we will be reaching out to.
For the distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers we will continue to offer the highest quality products and services as well as the most competitive pricing available. We will strive to improve all aspects of our business and improve efficiencies to continue to drive down costs.
Although the economy has shrunk and become flat we are well aware of the increasing demands of our customers and their customers as we all strive to survive in this negative economic climate. We are beginning to see signs of downward pressure on pricing and expect price decreases to be in play as early as the third quarter of 2009. We will monitor the situation closely and advise you as we go along.
Thank you for your continued loyalty,
Greg Wiener
Owner
Quickscrews International Inc.
I heard a report this morning (5/27/09) that stated many economists believe the recession will be over by the end of this year. They claim the basic underlying economic problems have been stemmed and although unemployment will continue to rise until the end of the year and into next year, they claim the worst is over and we will begin to regain our economic strength in 2010. I wish I could believe those economists but considering an abundance of facts surrounding the real estate market both commercial and residential, I do not happen to agree with them. The housing start numbers for April 2009 were the worst in recorded history. There remains a huge problem out there with jumbo and super jumbo loans coming due and this will be the next wave of foreclosures to hit the marketplace. The continual increase of low cost properties entering the supply side will further convince the Home builders to sit on their cash and wait out the problem. Why would home builders build a product that must compete with a foreclosure product which may be up to 50% cheaper to buy in a local marketplace? The builders know that eventually (I predict middle-end of 2010) the foreclosures will finally begin to subside and then once the supply is reduced they will again start applying for permits and begin building new homes.
The economists are misreading the housing sales numbers because they assume that more housing sales equals a reduction in supply, but when foreclosures continue on a faster pace than unit sales, this model does not apply. Furthermore using numbers that show a smaller decrease than expected for both Home Depot and Lowe’s to determine that new home building is picking up is also flawed. In our experience since many foreclosures need work, this is driving the increase in companies like Home depot and Lowe’s who service the small contractor or homeowner markets. This activity and the fact that more and more people are becoming do it your selfers is the cause for the smaller decreases, not the improved housing market.
On the commercial side; supply has swelled and that is bad news for commercial contractors and landlords. It is become increasingly difficult to match rental rates with financing models thus causing owners of properties to reduce rental rates. That translates to more properties on the market at lower prices thus creating a problem for all but the owner-user segment. It is more likely that many commercial properties will also end up in foreclosure thus causing a severe slowdown in that market.
I can only hope that I am wrong, but I do not think so. I believe it is the economists that are wrong.
Greg Wiener
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