Quote:
|
it is going the opposite way very, very , very fast around me. Have a couple companies that seem to think the lower the price, the better because they can get more work and get bigger and bigger.
|
Happening all over the country. The very existence of my business is at stake right now.
Our market is being flooded with start ups. Several companies spent big bucks speculating and bought equipment, trucks, store fronts. Every Hispanic that has a pickup was a gardener, is now a landscaper.
Every white boy between the ages of 20 and 35 that has half a work ethic is now a construction / landscape business. Selling work at $ 27 to $ 30 per hour. $ 5 under my conservative cost. Building decks 3 inches out of square, shorting materials, but still getting work.
A landscape company has about 5 full time on the books workers. He has another 5 " off the book" workers. Drops them off at job sites, with a bunch of hand tools, wheel barrows and says move this dirt, build a rock wall, dig trenches. No porti pottis, no place to get out of the weather to eat lunch, nothing. And he bills them at
$ 27 per hour. The homeowners love it.
He has taken over 30k of work from us in 2 months by prices 30% less than ours. He has taken over This is math folks, I know exactly what hes's doing.
The construction business is just booming here, and the state regulatory agencies basically don't respond or return our calls.
I can't fight them any more. I have to make my athletic field business work, or I have to get out of the business. I can't and won't operate on no or net profit margins of less than 8%. The math of good business says it is impossible to have a sustainable business under 8% net profit.
These a holes are taking a lot of money out of the market. Sure they will fade away when it goes the other way, but people operating legitimate, licensed, insured business are very much in jeopardy in my area.