Trade Association Meeting

I recently returned from a trade association meeting and thought you might be interested in some of the information I gathered, so here it is in nutshell form:

Sales in most markets are up, but manufacturers report that profitability is down.

China has grown to about 35% market share of the hand tool market based on dollars and about 75 to 80% based on units. Thank heaven they don't have a strong brand or marketing!

Concensus is that Sears is in trouble. Home Depot represents about 36% of hand tool sales while Lowes represents about 19% leaving everyone else with 46% of the business.

Autozone, Advance, General, O'Reilly, CSK, Genuine, PEP Boys and Fisher are the leaders in the automotive, retail aftermarket.

There is continuing concern about China, but there is a growing school of thought that China is poised for some really big problems as well.

Continuous Improvement via programs like LEAN are still hot topics.

There is a resurgence in trying to lobby for legislation to help manufacturers.