Festool Connect Event at JLC Live

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I recently attended the JLC Live event in Providence, RI. It's an event for builders and remodelers. Since Festool was showcasing some new tools at the event, I decided it'd be good for me to have a look. I ended up getting some interesting information on the state of the building industry as well. Here's a recap.

Festool USA,
a regular participant of the JLC Live Conference, held an additional event at
this year’s conference. After introducing Festool Connect in 2012, they’ve now
taken it one step further to act as a source of expertise for the remodeling
industry by holding the State of The Industry.

So, what is the State of The Industry (SOTI)? It’s an in-depth analysis of the
remodeling industry to identify key findings that are helpful for remodeling
business owners and employees alike. More specifically, SOTI looks at data
points relating to housing starts, remodeling activity, types of projects
homeowners undertook during the economic downturn and why, forecasts for the
industry, and strategies for small businesses to grow.

Using assistance from expert research analysts, Festool
looked at a number of different reports including the Residential Remodeling
Index (Hanley Wood) and Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing
Studies of Harvard University), and pulled the most relevant information for
remodeling businesses.

Here are a few highlights from the
presentation:

·      
Home Improvement Spending
Reached $300 Billion in 2012 – 2^nd highest in last decade

·      
During the economic
downturn, the number of high ROI projects (Window, Door Replacements) were
least affected

·      
400,000 New ‘Replacement
& Remodeling’ projects forcasted for 2013

In addition to these and additional
points, Festool went through strategies for small remodeling businesses to
grow, and gave examples on how to implement these strategies. The presentation
also covered demographics by age and region as to where the highest
opportunities are during economic up and downturns.

At the conclusion of the
presentation, there was a short Q & A that involved a number of questions
relating to detailed points of the presentation. But one question stood out
when someone asked “Why is Festool doing this? Aren’t you guy just supposed to
make tools?”, Michael Williams, VP of Marketing for Festool USA, replied “Working
with tools is lifestyle, and we want to do whatever we can to make the jobs of
our customers and fans easier. With the State of The Industry, we are providing
a tool, in presentation form, that will allow remodeling businesses to forecast
expectations so that they can better prepare their businesses.”

To read the presentation in full and
get all the research from SOTI, follow this link: http://blog.festoolusa.com/post/2013/04/05/The-State-of-the-Industry-for-Remodeling-2013.aspx