If It’s December, It’s Really Next Year Already — Taking Stock of 2009
Here is Publisher Beth Skove’s take on this year’s Top 5 Events and Influences.
Point of View: A Meeting of the Minds
A lively discussion with area shop owners is enlightening for all in attendance.
Point of View: Manage, Lead, Train or Educate?
“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.” — Peter Drucker (American educator and writer, 1909-2005)
Point of View: No Recession at Your Shop
The recession is over. Feeling better already, aren’t you? At a recent industry meeting of tool and equipment manufacturers, distributors and independent sales representatives, several of us were sitting around a table, discussing business conditions and what we had been experiencing. Someone described their current business situation with this analogy: Our industry has suffered like
Point of View: How’s Business?
Seems like I’ve heard that question and answered that question about 327,512 times since the beginning of the year. Late last year and early into 2009, “business is OK” had become the new “business is flat, but we’re hanging in there, hoping it gets better.” Not a very comforting response. But, from my current view,
How to Host a Tool Fair
Another Way to Show You Care
Point of View: A Time to Give
One of our sister publications, Tomorrow’s Technician, sponsors a “School of the Year” program every year with the kind assistance of Chicago Pneumatic. We ask our readers to tell us why they should be called the “School of the Year” and Chicago Pneumatic awards thousands of dollars in prizes to three runners-up and one grand-prize
Year-end Wrap-Up
I generally dislike those year-end articles in business magazines that try to wrap up everything that occurred in the entire year into one neat little 1,000-word essay. But this has been a unique year for many of us and I think I’ll make an exception this time and wrap it up. But I’m going to
What’s the Number One Reason You Buy a Certain Brand of Tool?
Brake & Front End, ImportCar and Underhood Service to find out how they’re spending their working hours, what tools they’ve purchased recently, and what do they plan to purchase in the near future. Of the hundreds of responses we received, I randomly picked 50 surveys. Here are some fast stats and comments from these 50
Point of View: Is There a Profitability Crisis in the Independent Repair Business?
All year-round, a part of my job is to meet and discuss business conditions with industry experts. These experts cross all lines in the aftermarket, from shop owners to manufacturers, to distributors, to repair technicians. Earlier this year, one of our industry’s top suppliers held its own “business conditions” discussion with more than 500 shop
Point of View: New Technologies Drive New Tool Needs
I recently returned from Carefree, AZ, where the Equipment & Tool Institute held its ToolTech 2008, a conference that brings together many premier U.S. tool manufacturers with car companies and other interested parties to discuss current and future tool needs for the automotive world. Representatives from Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Mazda, Honda, ISN, Medco, SPX,
Point of View: Same or Different?
This is the time of year when many tool manufacturers spend their weekends talking to an important segment of their business, the mobile tool distributors. I was walking one of the shows recently with a relative newcomer to the business. He lowered his voice and whispered to me, “Why do shop owners let more than