That "Great" Forecast

As you may have seen yet another market study was released last week touting the growth of Laminated and Tempered glass by 2011. The report had all of the basics, the great features that laminated and tempered offer and with new technologies really hitting stride, lots of value to be offered. However, this miraculous increase only comes to 1% per year. So unless I am reading it wrong, while business will improve, its only going to improve by 1%, and that paltry improvement will surely be equalized out by all of the other costs that affect business these days like health care, and utility prices. Not to mention more and more competition. So while it seems like everyone and their mother has a laminated autoclave on order, I wonder if they are truly seeing the big picture and understanding that there’s just not as much growth out there as it seems.

Elsewhere….

-- AAMA and IGMA are having their meetings right now and one item caught my eye. The issue of AAMA 507 being a welcome competitor to the current effort of NFRC to rate and police the commercial market was discussed. And the residential side of the membership took issue because they are worried that AAMA taking on NFRC would jeopardize the relationship the two organizations have. As noted AAMA does do work for the NFRC, and by promoting this, they may lose their gig there. So now the membership of AAMA really has a decision to make, do you want to be beholden to NFRC or do you not. If so, that’s fine, but then you should go the way of the WDMA and be all residential.

-- Like noted in the previous post, I have been getting a good amount of feedback on the NFRC CMA fees and the news surrounding it. The one question I got a lot was “is there any way that AIA would stand for it?” Well I can tell you that the NFRC has tried recently to get the AIA’s input on the program. They sent them this letter (click here) and asked for feedback. Problem is, the letter was typical NFRC (vague) and it was probably scanned by someone at AIA before being thrown away. Not only that, their reaction after reading pages 2 and 3 would be “I’m not doing this crap” but the best part? There’s 995 words on 3 full pages and the words “Cost” “Fee” or "Code" are not on any them! So I guess by reading this letter it’s a free program right? So why, if I am the AIA, should I care, it’s a free voluntary program- not gonna cost me or my client a dime!!! So when you hear that the NFRC asked for feedback, you know what they sent and the "details" that they conveniently left out.

--A note on USGNN mentioned the various industry groups have been quiet on their meeting with the NFRC last week. I do not take it as anything but these groups possibly trying to work quietly through the system. The Greg Carney’s and Tom Culp’s of the world did not become highly respected industry people by jumping the gun. I have to have faith that the AEC, GANA and even IGMA, who I have been critical of in the past because of their lack of action years ago when this started, will be exhausting every angle they can to try and educate the Board of NFRC and trying to get them to make sensible decisions. Especially since there may be only 1 NFRC board member who actually knows what goes into the glass and aluminum on a commercial building.

-- Came across this story (click here) on Blogs in medical field. It was an interesting read and another piece of evidence showing the growing trend of blogging. I think though I’ll have to ask my doctor if he blogs, because not sure I’d want him chatting about my medical history on line…

-- Lastly, its Father’s day weekend and once upon a time I wrote an article for USGlass talking about the great “Dads” in our industry. And that holds very true today. With family businesses still strong it’s no doubt that the “Father” figure really is a huge piece of our businesses. So here’s to all the Dad’s… both in life and in death (We miss you Poppy!) a Happy Fathers Day to all.

Feel free to visit the USGNN message boards here to join the comments on Father’s day.

The video this week is honor of Bob Barker- who is calling it quits from hosting The Price Is Right. Great blooper here where the contestant says what I think Bob is probably thinking!