Are we in a bubble?

[Paddy1000111]

3 hours ago, eggsarascal said:

I'm in a bit of a quandary now, do I follow the multi millionaires business model, or do I go and wash the van.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not on about spunking thousands on shiny kit. Just wash the van, give it a polish, do some paint touch ups, maybe touch up missing paint on the chipper, logo work shirts are about £7, maybe re-design your business cards, touch up your website etc. Maybe you broke the rear light on a trailer and it's been left, stick a new lens on. The old saying says you can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter for under £100. 

 

You don't need to spend loads to give a good first impression 🤷🏼‍♂️

[devon TWiG]

Ash die back is , and will be providing a lot of work for the next few years at least !!   but if it all gets a bit to competitive price wise  then there will be a lot of busy firms not making much money , and I have never seen so many small tree companies as there is now !!   

[s o c]

The groundwork/plant guys will take a lot of the ash dieback work.

everbody and their dog has a tree shears now 

[eggsarascal]

3 hours ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Wash the van you idle Cnut!

Charming.

[agg221]

7 hours ago, Big J said:

A lot of people have excess cash at the moment on account of having been furloughed and having had their social extravagances curtailed. This, combined with the pressing desire to get socialising again, means that getting gardens tidied ahead of the rule of 6 outside coming back is a priority. Correspondingly, sales of garden furniture and such like have been huge.

 

The pin that'll burst the bubble is that the economic reality of covid has yet to hit. Furlough is delaying hundreds of thousands (if not more) of redundancies, we're looking at a complete restructuring of how the country buys it's goods, with highstreets suffering an unprecedented shock. The legacy cost of the covid support measures is astronomical, and as soon as that reality hits home, non-essential spending (such as tree surgery) will be reduced.

 

Just my 2 cents.

I agree with most of this, except the part about people sitting around on furlough having money in their pockets and being desperate to spend it.

 

Furlough covers 80% of your salary. Even allowing for reduced travel costs, most people on furlough are worse off than they were working. They also have a high level of uncertainty over whether their jobs will resume so tend to be more cautious about spending..

 

The people who have the money for tree work are all those people who are still working, from home, often more hours than they were before, and are fed up with seeing that tree out of the window every day when sitting working. There are plenty of them and they may continue to want work done if/when there is some semblance of a return to normal as the mix of office/home working permanently changes.

 

I would anticipate a gradual decline in demand from around June through to the autumn,. After that, who knows?

 

Alec

[Paddy1000111]

2 minutes ago, agg221 said:

I agree with most of this, except the part about people sitting around on furlough having money in their pockets and being desperate to spend it.

 

Furlough covers 80% of your salary. Even allowing for reduced travel costs, most people on furlough are worse off than they were working. They also have a high level of uncertainty over whether their jobs will resume so tend to be more cautious about spending..

 

The people who have the money for tree work are all those people who are still working, from home, often more hours than they were before, and are fed up with seeing that tree out of the window every day when sitting working. There are plenty of them and they may continue to want work done if/when there is some semblance of a return to normal as the mix of office/home working permanently changes.

 

I would anticipate a gradual decline in demand from around June through to the autumn,. After that, who knows?

 

Alec

I'd disagree about the 80% thing. Everyone I know on furlough has for the most part been better off. The only people who are worse off have been the single adults/couples living on a shoe string budget prior to lockdown who weren't really getting tree work done beforehand anyway. Everyone else has saved money with no holidays, no nights out, no parties, no school trips, being able to look after the kids so no childcare, mortgage holidays, more cooking at home as they have more time etc etc. 

[Retired Climber]

The 80 % is the amount the employer gets, not the employee. Loads of companies are topping it up so many staff on Furlough are on full pay. 

 

[agg221]

The people I know who have been on furlough have been on 80% pay. Those who have been on higher have had a day a week of enforced annual leave until their annual leave has run out, at which point they have dropped to 80%,.

 

Most of the people I knew who were on furlough are now unemployed - it was a precursor. Redundancy came through in the autumn, as soon as there would have been any cost to the company by reinstatement.

 

I would imagine that people who work in retail, hospitality or tourism where the company believes it will be re-opening may be in a different position - my experience has been in engineering (including RR, Airbus, JCB and my own employer).

 

Alec

[Paddy1000111]

13 minutes ago, agg221 said:

my experience has been in engineering (including RR, Airbus, JCB and my own employer).

Funny that! My experience is my old aviation buddies and there's bugger all work on and most are unemployed or doing a "filler" job like working at princess yachts. The engineering sector has been fully shafted! 

[Mark Bolam]

What’s the craic in the aviation industry when the world opens up again Paddy?

Will it still be a long time before they need the same amount of people doing the jobs?

 

Obviously hospitality is bolloxed, but I can see it bouncing back very, very quickly.